A recent study calculates that Americans are willing to pay $5 trillion, or $15,000 each, to stop the spread of COVID-19, said Fast Company. The conclusion came from a paper authored by pair of researchers from New York state's Clarksdale University. The figure was derived not by a survey but by calculating what they said was the impact value of public intervention measures such as social distancing and statewide lockdowns by estimating how much people were willing to pay to have them implemented.

"We adapt the standard economic model of willingness-to-pay (WTP) for morbidity and fatality risk-reductions by incorporating a number of issues that are particularly relevant during epidemics ... namely, health-care capacity constraints, dynamic aspects of prevention (i.e. interventions aimed at flattening the epidemic curve), high uncertainty about key epidemiological parameters, and distributional issues due to high heterogeneity in the underlying risks.We then use currently available epidemiological data to calibrate the model."

Based on the math that one can view in the paper itself (you can access it for free without registering), the researchers estimated that, based on modeling the spread of the disease and examining epidemiological and economic data, "the average person is essentially willing to pay $15,000 to reduce the rates of infection through social distancing, shelter-in-place and other interventions. We then multiplied that by the population of the U.S. to get an aggregate figure."

FastCompany noted that, so far, about $3 trillion in relief measures have been approved so far. The paper's results could theoretically indicate a willingness by the public to spend more.