Who should get the Coronavirus vaccine first?

 According to our Leaders - Government experts, politicians, and a variety of experts - the Coronavirus vaccine should be allocated to people so as to save lives.  Based on this goal, they conclude that health professionals should be first on line and old, vulnerable people should be next on line.

 It is surprising (actually, perhaps not) that our Leaders have missed the fact that saving lives costs person years of life and that a more sensible goal than saving lives is to save person years of life.  According to the latter rule, the vaccine should be allocated in order of from highest to lowest expected person years of life added by giving the vaccine to the next person.

Here is a bare bones example that illustrates the tradeoff.  Consider the following two people, neither a health care professional.  Person A is 85 years old and in such poor health that there is a 99% probability of his dying in 30 days of non-Coronavirus causes and a 100% probability of dying if he becomes infected with Coronavirus.  Person B is 50 years old with an expected lifetime of 20 years if he doesn’t become infected with Coronavirus but, due to a health issue, has a 10% probability death by Coronavirus if he becomes infected.  To keep things simple, assume the same probability of infection and its occurring instantly for both.

Roughly, the person years saved by giving the vaccine to Person A is proportional to 30/365=0.082 and the person years saved by giving the vaccine to Person B is proportional to 0.1*20=2.  If it is an either-or situation, giving the vaccine to Person B does far more good than giving it to Person A.

 A more detailed cost-benefit analysis would be even better.  For example, taking into account that saving a health care professional’s life also may save several other lives.  Similarly, I should be near the front of the line for the vaccine even though I am 83 years old – because the great ideas I will come up with will save many thousands of lives (besides, I’m a nice guy).

 It is telling that what we have been told by our leaders, experts, etc. ignores such an important tradeoff,

 It is surprising what poor decisions supposedly smart people often make.  This may reflect a tendency on their part to overestimate how smart they are and how much they know.  One of the best arbitrages, if possible, would be to buy these people at the price they are worth and sell them at the price they think they are worth.