There are far too many unknown, and indeed unknowable variables, for a cost-benefit analysis, even if it were politically acceptable.

There are broadly three options the US has

1) Total lockdown

2) Sporadic geographic lockdowns of various intenstiy

3) Do nothing

Factors we don't know include how behavior would change even without top down pressures (i.e. doing nothing will still damage economic output), and how long lockdowns can last before protests, riots, and full on civil war, how effective a lockdown would be, what pressure there will be on healthcare providers in each scenario (including say healthcare workers refusing to treat patients)

While our higher brains knows that as a society we are unwilling to spend $1 billion to extend someone's life by 2 days, when it comes to this sort of magnitude there are other considerations than financial benefits, indeed the entire situation brings questions of what is the value of money anyway. When we say we're willing to spend $150k to extend a life by a year, what does that actually mean?

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22751269 for a cost benefit analysis.

Long story short, it is worth it.

As with iso1631 there, I disagree. The lockdown will only save significant numbers of lives if it lasts until we have a way to reduce population death rates (either via better treatment, prophylactics, or vaccines) OR if we can exterminate it entirely and prevent COVID-19 from becoming endemic to the US again. I think the latter is unlikely, and the former requires 6+months of lockdown.

If we do three months of lockdown and then people give up and head out as normal again, we've burned a few trillion dollars, and a hundred million years of US citizen lives, for nothing. The deaths still come, just shifted back three months. That's the worst case, and it's what we might be heading for.

It should be entirely possible to ramp up masks and ventilators in a couple months. China is already making immense amounts.

Universal mask wearing would go a long way, especially with a much lower baseline of active infections.