Valuing the years of life lost due to COVID-19: the differences and pitfalls

Abstract

The only thing that is certain about death is that upon it, no life remains, and that the risk of death during a person’s lifetime is 1. These facts cannot be disputed; however, assessments over how much life has been prematurely lost upon death have led to polarised views. The impact of COVID-19 is drawing increased attention on how we approach putting a value on the life prematurely lost by death (Appleby 2020; Hanlon et al. 2020; Kirigia and Muthuri 2020).

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-020-01430-2