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. 2023 May 11;18(5):e0284273.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284273. eCollection 2023.

The global COVID-19 mortality cost report card: 2020, 2021, and 2022

W Kip Viscusi  1
Affiliations

The global COVID-19 mortality cost report card: 2020, 2021, and 2022

W Kip Viscusi. PLoS One. .

Abstract

The United States is the country with the greatest number of COVID-19 deaths in 2020, 2021, and 2022. Both the U.S. and the world exhibited an increase in the number of COVID-related deaths in 2021 and a decrease in 2022. The U.S. share of COVID-related deaths declined in 2021 but rose in 2022, leading to a cumulative total U.S. mortality share of 17%. The extent to which the U.S. is an outlier is even greater based on the monetized mortality costs. Using the value of a statistical life to monetize the mortality impact increases the performance gap between the U.S. and the rest of the world because of the high mortality risk valuation in the U.S. The worldwide COVID-19 mortality cost was $29.4 trillion as of January 1, 2023, with a U.S. share of $12.7 trillion, or 43% of the global total. Throughout the COVID pandemic, the U.S. mortality cost share has been in the narrow range of 43% to 45%. Given the high U.S. value of a statistical life, these monetized mortality cost values are more than double the U.S. share of COVID-related deaths. The U.S. mortality cost share is greater if the value of a statistical life declines more than proportionally with income for low-income countries.

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Conflict of interest statement

No. The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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