Counting the costs of COVID-19: why future treatment option values matter

I critique a recent analysis (Miles, Stedman & Heald, 2020) of COVID-19 lockdown costs and benefits, focussing on the United Kingdom (UK). Miles et al. (2020) argue that the March-June UK lockdown was more costly than the benefit of lives saved, evaluated using the NICE threshold of £30000 for a quality-adjusted life year (QALY) and that the costs of a lockdown for 13 weeks from mid-June would be vastly greater than any plausible estimate of the benefits, even if easing produced a second infecti...