Hi and welcome to COVID Quickly, a scientific American podcast series.

This is your fast track update on the COVID pandemic.

We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus

and the disease.

We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means.

I'm Tony Lewis.

I'm Josh Fishman.

And we're a scientific American senior health editors.

Today we're going to explain how vaccines helped the economy.

We saved $10 for every $1 we spent on them, plus millions of lives.

And we'll talk about the protest in China against extreme lockdowns and the harm that the

country's zero COVID policies doing and how that could affect the rest of the world.

COVID vaccines cost billions to develop and deliver.

But for at least one big city that used them, they had an incredible rate of financial

return.

We usually talk about vaccines saving lives, but in New York City hit hard by the pandemic

early on, they saved the town from a gigantic economic hole to Tanya.

Vaccines save the city about $28 billion, which is what it would have lost without the

vaccines.

Or as you said, every dollar spent on shots saved $10 that would have been spent without

the shots.

So Josh, where did the savings come from?

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