Long COVID: Costs for the German economy and health care and pension system, 2023, Gandjour

Long COVID: Costs for the German economy and health care and pension system
Gandjour, Afschin

Background
Patients with acute COVID-19 can develop persistent symptoms (long/post COVID-19 syndrome). This study aimed to project the economic, health care, and pension costs due to long/post-COVID-19 syndrome with new onset in Germany in 2021.

Methods
Using secondary data, economic costs were calculated based on wage rates and the loss of gross value-added. Pension payments were determined based on the incidence, duration, and amount of disability pensions. Health care expenditure was calculated based on rehabilitation expenses.

Results
The analysis estimated a production loss of 3.4 billion euros. The gross value-added loss was calculated to be 5.7 billion euros. The estimated financial burden on the health care and pension systems due to SARS-CoV-2 infection was approximately 1.7 billion euros. Approximately 0.4 percent of employees are projected to be wholly or partially withdrawn from the labor market in the medium term due to long/post-COVID with new onset in 2021.

Conclusion
Costs of long/post-COVID-19 syndrome with new onset in 2021 are not negligible for the German economy and health care and pension systems but may still be manageable.

Link | PDF (BMC Health Services Research)

 

Very partial count, and only to the government. So those are only estimates of direct expenses and losses, it seems to ignore all indirect consequences aside from trying to estimate based on no data:

They seem content to waste money on useless rituals. And nothing else. Nothing at all. Now that's expensive.

They don't seem to think it's worth trying to do anything. What a weird mindset, just complete lack of ambition and motivation.

Really they're just wasting huge sums that could solve the problem and find nothing wrong with that, although I don't know where they got that number given the above mention that they can't know:

And they are clearly assuming that rehabilitation is effective. Somehow. Fairy dust, probably? Really just assuming that it magically works. They just spend that money and *magic occurs* people are rehabilitated. Except when they're not:

Honestly at this point it's becoming very clear that all governments prefer to do nothing, waste far larger sums than what is needed to actually solve it, without even attempting to put any serious effort into it. More money has already been wasted on those pointless rituals. And the losses will keep piling up. Absurd economic policy, spending more money for no results. They're content to just watch the problem grow, and still do nothing about it:

They even say they expect it to grow, unless in their use of language "growing size of the problem" means other fancy magical ideas from fairy land. And find no problem with that. Impressive apathy here.

 

I guess the answer to this question:



is "we watch the problem grow". Good stuff. They're actually paid for this. Amazing.

I'm sorry that's not fair, it should say "we may watch the problem grow". Let's not get too carried away here.