The economic consequences of the virus also disproportionately hurt people working in socially exposed occupations, such as waiters and hairdressers, who are typically more financially vulnerable.

In an interview on Wednesday, he said very short lockdowns can significantly reduce deaths without much harm to economic activity, partly because people self-isolate regardless of whether there was a government-mandated shutdown.
Second wave a ‘standard feature’
But an extended lockdown just caused a deeper recession without any real extra benefit of saving lives, Professor Kaplan said.
“Early on you can have strong health gains, with minimal economic impact, from a short lockdown avoiding hospitals being overwhelmed,” he said.
“After that all you’re doing is delaying a second wave, so unless you can hold that lockdown in place all the way until a vaccine arrives, the marginal benefits get smaller and smaller.”
In the US, we found that around two months was the inflection point where the economic costs start to get very steep and all you’re doing is really killing the economy with little additional impact on deaths.
“The general forces are the same in Victoria.
“The fact that testing and tracing like NSW is feasible in Victoria, unlike the US, is an additional reason for loosening restrictions in Victoria.”
Professor Kaplan predicted the US would be hit by a large second wave of the virus towards the November US presidential election.
“A standard feature of lockdowns is a big second wave,” he said.
Distributional impacts
His co-authored virus research, The Great Lockdown and the Big Stimulus: Tracing the Pandemic Possibility Frontier for the US, also found the virus initially financially hurt people working in socially intensive occupations.
Even before any lockdown, these typically lower-paid and casually employed workers were disproportionately affected because patrons voluntarily avoided going out to venues such as restaurants and shopping centres.
The socially exposed workers were also more financially vulnerable to a drop in income, because they tended to live pay-cheque-to pay-cheque and have less liquid wealth.
A subsequent government-mandated lockdown on most of the population then hurt the incomes of other people in less socially intensive occupations, such as mechanics and coal miners, who couldn’t work from home.
“The lockdown changes the shape of who in the population is going to bear the burden of the pandemic,” Professor Kaplan said.
He said the findings found there was some truth in both sides of the argument about whether lockdowns imposed steep costs and others who argued it was the behavioural changes to the virus not lockdowns that did more harm.
“It depends on how the individual is exposed to the virus and lockdowns.”