"Taking quality of life into account, how many life-years has the reaction to COVID destroyed? To see what I’m getting at, ask yourself: “Suppose you could either live a year of life in the COVID era, or X months under normal conditions. What’s the value of X?” Given the enormous social disruption and dire social isolation that most people have endured, X=10 months seems like a conservative estimate.
...
So what? Well, we’ve now endured 8 months of COVID life. If that’s worth only 5/6ths as much as normal time, the average American has now lost 4/3rds of a month. Multiplying that by the total American population of 330M, the total loss comes to about 37 million years of life. That’s about 15 times the reported estimate of the direct cost of COVID."
https://www.econlib.org/life-years-lost-the-quantity-and-the-quality/
...
So what? Well, we’ve now endured 8 months of COVID life. If that’s worth only 5/6ths as much as normal time, the average American has now lost 4/3rds of a month. Multiplying that by the total American population of 330M, the total loss comes to about 37 million years of life. That’s about 15 times the reported estimate of the direct cost of COVID."
https://www.econlib.org/life-years-lost-the-quantity-and-the-quality/