Lockdown and the increased demand for cosmetic surgery

Yesterday, I wrote a post that referenced the cost-benefit principle. One of the key points of the cost-benefit principle is that people try to avoid costs. When the cost of an activity increases, people tend to do less of it. And, when the cost of an activity decreases, people tend to do more of it. The definition of cost here is broad - it includes not only monetary costs, but costs that are non-monetary such as time or effort or psychic costs (which are the costs of added stress or loss of quality of life). Which brings me to this article from the BBC a couple of days ago:

Despite the virus shutting businesses across the globe, a number of plastic surgery clinics have remained open, adopting stricter measures such as Covid-19 tests and more frequent cleaning.

Clinics in the US, Japan, South Korea and Australia have all seen a rise in patients coming in for treatment including lip fillers, botox, face lifts and nose jobs...

Rod J Rohrich, a cosmetic surgeon based in Texas, said he was seeing a lot more patients. "Even more than I would say is normal. We could probably operate six days a week if we wanted to. It's pretty amazing," he told the BBC.

He said usually people would have to factor in recovery at home when considering surgery but now that many people are working from home, this doesn't need to be considered.

"They can actually recover at home and also they can have a mask that they wear when they go outside after a rhinoplasty or facelift. People want to resume their normal lives and part of that is looking as good as they feel."

One of the costs of cosmetic surgery is the time spent recovering at home. That cost might include foregone income from not working, or simply a psychic cost of wanting to avoid being seen by other people while the patient has a bandaged or bruised face.

The coronavirus lockdown has meant that many people are working from home. So, for many people the amount of income they would forego by convalescing at home has reduced, and therefore so has the cost of cosmetic surgery. The psychic costs have likely reduced as well, as cosmetic surgery patients will face less anxiety about being seen (they can just switch their camera off in any videoconferencing). 

When the cost of something decreases, we tend to do more of it - in this case, more cosmetic surgery.

[HT: Marginal Revolution]