The COVID-19 pandemic has now led to the deaths of thousands of people and infected even more. The human tragedy is staggering, but unfortunately it is not the only cost that the pandemic has imposed.
Economist Vanessa Vargas and Principal Member of Technical Staff Patrick Finley from Sandia National Laboratories will join REMI for their special guest webinar, “Epidemiological and Economic Modeling of a Pandemic,” that will be presented on Tuesday, March 24th from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. (ET). This discussion combines epidemiology and economics to explore the significant costs associated with a widespread outbreak and its interruption of normal economic activity.
The Chinese economy has already been severely impacted, and the effects continue to spread with over 20,000 cases reported outside of China and hundreds reported in the United States.
In order to understand the potential impacts on the U.S. economy, Ms. Vargas and Mr. Finley will utilize a 2010 report produced by Sandia that analyzed the effects of the H1N1 and H5N1 influenza pandemics using REMI. They will explain the methodologies implemented in Sandia’s report before highlighting the key findings discovered during their assessment. Basing the analysis on careful epidemiological pre-modeling, the report displayed how much illness could reduce economic output via increased mortality, absenteeism, and reduced worker productivity.
This webinar presentation also describes how the COVID-19 outbreak may differ from previous pandemics, both epidemiologically and with respect to China’s positioning in the world’s economic system.
