A new analysis suggests Americans are willing to pay about US$5 trillion to stop the spread of COVID-19 and save as many lives as possible – dwarfing the $3 trillion Congress has so far agreed to spend to support the U.S. economy and its workers. Diego C. Nocetti and Luciana Echazu write in The Conversation that to get to that figure, they calculated the implicit value of public intervention measures like social distancing and statewide lockdowns – meant to prevent people from catching COVID-19 and possibly dying – by estimating how much people are willing to pay to have them implemented.