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‘The $16 Trillion Virus’: Economists Estimate Financial Toll of COVID-19 on US

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‘The $16 Trillion Virus’: Economists Estimate Financial Toll of COVID-19 on US
A pandemic-themed Uncle Sam poster is seen in San Francisco, Calif., on July 31, 2020. Daniel Slim/AFP/Getty Images
Tom Ozimek
By Tom Ozimek
10/13/2020Updated: 10/13/2020

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and fellow Harvard University economist David Cutler argued in an essay on Oct. 12 that the pandemic will end up costing the United States $16 trillion, around four times the toll exacted by the 2007–2009 Great Recession.

“Approximately half of this amount is the lost income from the COVID-19-induced recession; the remainder is the economic effects of shorter and less healthy life,” the two economists wrote in a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in which they called the outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus “the greatest threat to prosperity and well-being the U.S. has encountered since the Great Depression.”
Tom Ozimek
Tom Ozimek
Reporter
Tom Ozimek is a senior reporter for The Epoch Times. He has a broad background in journalism, deposit insurance, marketing and communications, and adult education.
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