---
title: "Timeline photos Timeline photos Timeline photos The amount of money…"
date: 2020-07-02
source: facebook
type: Archer T. Ships added 3 new photos.
---

# Timeline photos Timeline photos Timeline photos The amount of money…

*July 2, 2020 · Facebook*

::::: {}
::: {}
![](img/2020-07-02-fb-004-img01.webp){style="max-width:100%; margin:1em 0"}![](img/2020-07-02-fb-004-img02.webp){style="max-width:100%; margin:1em 0"}![](img/2020-07-02-fb-004-img03.webp){style="max-width:100%; margin:1em 0"}
:::

::: {}
The amount of money people are willing to spend on COVID-19 mitigation is truly gobsmacking.\
\
Economist Sergio Rebelo estimate that the lockdown will shrink the US economy by approximately 22%---a cost of \$4.2 trillion. (6) Economists Makridis and Hartley estimate a 5 percent decline in real GDP growth for every one month of partial economic shutdown. Thus, the economic cost of two months of mitigation measures is \$2.14 trillion (10 percent). (8) Other countries are paying costs of similar magnitude. (7)\
\
Yet is COVID-19 mitigation going to give us the highest return on lives saved/dollar spent?\
\
What if that money had been spent on anti-aging research instead?\
\
To put the amount of money spent on COVID-19 mitigation in context, spending on COVID-19 dwarfs national spending on pet care (\$71 billion) which in turn is more than double the \_entire\_ NIH budget (\$31 billion), of which only 3.7% goes to the National Institute of Aging (\$1.2 billion). (1), (2)\
\
Consider that COVID-19 has cost 515,000 global deaths \_total\_ to date, whereas aging takes \~100,000 lives \_per day\_.\
\
More people die from aging in five days, than have died from COVID-19 \_total\_ gobally to date.\
\
Now, of course, a lot people might say: we can do something to stop COVID-19; we can\'t do anything to stop aging.\
\
And it \_used\_ to be the case that little could be done about aging. At that time, fatalism was a reasonable attitude. But that\'s no longer the case. To cite just one promising anti-aging study:\
\
\"In a study published today in the journal Nature, medical researchers at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine---led by cell biologists Darren Baker and Jan van Deursen---have made this decade\'s biggest breakthrough in understanding the complex world of physical aging. The researchers found that systematically removing a category of living, stagnant cells (ones which can no longer reproduce) extends the lives of otherwise normal mice by 25 percent. \" (4)\
\
Even if one doesn\'t care about aging per se, people with aging bodies are most at risk for dying from COVID-19. The best way to make humanity more resilient against COVID-19 and other age-related diseases is to strike at its source.\
\
Curing death would just be a side effect.\
\
The potential returns from aging research are enormous:\
\
\"Using a model of future health and spending in the USA, the effect of delayed aging resulting in 2.2 years additional life expectancy would yield US\$7 trillion in savings over 50 years; whereas addressing single pathologies such as cancer and heart disease would yield less\" (3)\
\
But sadly, COVID-19 levels of money are not going to be spent on aging any time soon. I wish I knew what to do to make people feel the same urgency about aging that they do about COVID-19.\
\
#aging\
\
(1) [https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2015/10/billionaire-philanthropists-funding-anti-aging-research](https://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2015/10/billionaire-philanthropists-funding-anti-aging-research){target="_blank"}\
\
(2) [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/americans-are-spending-more-on-pets-than-ever-before-72-billion-300816835.html](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/americans-are-spending-more-on-pets-than-ever-before-72-billion-300816835.html){target="_blank"}\
\
(3) [https://www.cell.com/trends/biotechnology/fulltext/S0167-7799(17)30171-3](https://www.cell.com/trends/biotechnology/fulltext/S0167-7799(17)30171-3){target="_blank"}\
\
(4) [https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a19277/scientists-can-now-radically-expand-the-lifespan-of-mice-are-humans-next/](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a19277/scientists-can-now-radically-expand-the-lifespan-of-mice-are-humans-next/){target="_blank"}\
\
(5) [https://www.sens.org/covid-19-and-aging/](https://www.sens.org/covid-19-and-aging/){target="_blank"}\
\
(6) [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/modelers-weigh-value-lives-and-lockdown-costs-put-price-covid-19](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/modelers-weigh-value-lives-and-lockdown-costs-put-price-covid-19){target="_blank"}\
\
(7) [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/14/the-past-three-months-have-proved-it-the-costs-of-lockdown-are-too-high](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/14/the-past-three-months-have-proved-it-the-costs-of-lockdown-are-too-high){target="_blank"}\
\
(8) [https://www.mercatus.org/publications/covid-19-policy-brief-series/cost-covid-19-rough-estimate-2020-us-gdp-impact](https://www.mercatus.org/publications/covid-19-policy-brief-series/cost-covid-19-rough-estimate-2020-us-gdp-impact){target="_blank"}
:::
:::::