2 million to 4 million full-time workers are out of the labor force due to long Covid. (To be counted in the labor force, an individual must have a job or be actively looking for work.)
The midpoint of her estimate — 3 million workers — accounts for 1.8% of the entire U.S. civilian labor force. The figure may “sound unbelievably high” but is consistent with the impact in other major economies like the United Kingdom, Bach wrote in an August report. The figures are also likely conservative, since they exclude workers over age 65, she said.
As she says, this correlates to estimates elsewhere.
I want to be as clear as possible about this: the effect of Long Covid on the economy is going to dwarf that of closures or of Covid TrueZero (a policy of cleaning up our air with filters and UV light, while using proper N95 masks, travel bans and other public health measures in the meantime.) Remember, Long Covid is still going on. It could go on for years, or even decades. There is no guarantee it mutates into a form which does not cause immunity and organ damage.
That effect becomes more pronounced as you get older, and the tipping point is somewhere around the age of 50. This is going to lead to a further significant decline in lifespans if we can’t find a cure, but don’t assume we will: we’ve spent trillions and not found a cure for cancer and our society has passed its tipping point and is now in decline (this is true globally.)
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China did ZeroCovid STUPID, as a number of people have pointed out, and have now reduced their efforts. We’ll see if they stay reduced after the Chinese population discovers what happens when you “let’er rip”, but if China continues, that’s the end of one of the last major population blocs which wasn’t riddled with Covid. Remember, again, that Covid can do significant damage which you don’t notice, that has no symptoms now. But it will later.
China’s Zero Covid policy was the right policy, done wrong, and when you do the right thing the wrong way, you discredit it. China’s anti-Covid policies took longer to be discredited than Western ones because while stupid they weren’t as stupid as ours, but they still overly relied on lockdowns rather than infrastructure improvement and refused to use n95 masks.
So, globally, this is going to lead to long term economic issues, both in lack of workers and supporting unhealthy people, or just letting them suffer and die, which will still have economic effects. (It’s obvious that en-masse we don’t really care about the morality of it).
And you, personally, will probably live less years and be less healthy. The more times you get infected, the more true this will be.