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> That has a cost in lives too. Four times as many people have already died from COVID-19 as are ever supposed to have died from great recession excess suicide

> That has a cost in lives too. Four times as many people have already died from COVID-19 as are ever supposed to have died from great recession excess suicides, and we are just getting started with COVID-19. And the effect of recessions on overall mortality is much less clear (fewer die in commuting car accidents during recessions, for example). There's just no plausible way that a recession following this pandemic will kill more folks than the pandemic itself will, not even close.

Exmoor 7y ago
Suicides is certainly the most obvious and explicit way to measure loss of life from the 2008 recession, but it's certainly not the whole story. Overdose deaths (70,000+ in 2018 in the US), and other addiction-related deaths are probably significantly exasperated by economic crisis. I'm not arguing that the deaths from the virus won't outnumber deaths related to the quarantine, but they will be significant. They will also be much more likely to involve younger people whereas the virus is mostly killing people who are within a 10 years of reaching the average life expectancy for their country or above.
- Zenst 7y ago
  There will also be suicides related to this event as well, one example https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/german-minister-commits-suicide-after-virus-crisis-worries/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/german-mi...
  - Exmoor 7y ago
    Also, likely homicides: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/tenant-suspected-property-owners-death-taken-into-custody/JQOUJVRGQVEJLCFXEZJTV3CYTM/ https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/tenant-suspected-property-o...
    - Zenst 7y ago
      Yes, the impact thru cause and effect is always bigger and will play out in many ways and forms for a while, even once things settle down on the surface, that impact will ripple on for some time.
- sgc 7y ago
  Most Americans have never had a month off work in their lives. It will probably help mental health for for them at least.
  - Exmoor 7y ago
    This comment is mind boggling to me. There is a incredible difference between "I'm taking a month off of work" and "I'm being forced to stay in my home, physically isolated from my friends and forced to be around those I share a home with 24/7, with the possibility of financial hardship in the near or far term." One is a vacation, the other is prison.
    - sgc 7y ago
      It's obviously not vacation, nor is it prison. But the weight of the American rat race is undoubtedly crushing to many.
  - tempestn 7y ago
    I don't agree with the initial premise that suppression measures would potentially cost anywhere near as many lives as they would save. That said, I don't think it's reasonable to compare being off work due to a pandemic lockdown or similar circumstances to a month-long vacation. This will cause significant hardship and stress for many people. It's just that without measures to control the virus, you would still have those effects; they would just come due to fear after a bunch of people die, rather than intentional efforts.
    - sgc 7y ago
      I don't think it's a vacation. But I do think it will have some potentially beneficial side effects, as well as the obvious negative ones.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
adventured 7y ago
> There's just no plausible way that a recession following this pandemic will kill more folks than the pandemic itself will, not even close. You're unfortunately very far off in that claim about risk as it pertains to economy. Suicides are a small component of economic risk factors. For example, if you miscalculate what you're doing in India in managing people and the functioning of the economy through this, you could cause famine and kill millions of people. A story from Bloomberg covering the food supply deprivation beginning in India: > ‘We Will Starve Here’: India’s Poor Flee Cities in Mass Exodus http://archive.is/rusMy http://archive.is/rusMy
- guscost 7y ago
  See also: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/global-recession-halts-decades-of-steady-progress-in-reducing-world-hunger-8204331.html%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/worl... Put together the suicides (which could be worse this time with so many people trapped at home), domestic abuse, drug addiction, and worldwide starvation, and it adds up to a lot of lives. That’s just what I’m halfway confident about so far.
malandrew 7y ago
According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die per day due to poverty. That's over 8 million per year. And that's just children while poverty has been the lowest it has ever been. What do you think is going to happen in developing countries in the next few years? Absolute mortality will likely be around 1% or less once you take into account all those that are asymptomatic and much of this 1% would die in the next decade due to old age and co-morbidities. If poverty doubles (very probable) and the number of children dying dies as a result, it will take 9.5 years just to reach the death toll in children alone. Once you factor adults as well, I wouldn't be surprised if the economic fallout causes more deaths than this flu in less than 5 years. These countries will also never catch up to where they otherwise would have been, so the additional incremental deaths due to the economic fallout will persist in perpetuity.
- Zenst 7y ago
  If the media plotted a minute by minute uptodate map showing those deaths due to poverty, people's mindsets would change. But the impact and knock on effects of this pandemic, will not exactly help poverty related deaths and without a doubt, exacerbate them.
  - vanniv 7y ago
    This lockdown has already guaranteed many more deaths due to poverty. Every day it continues, more are added. But, there is no up-to-the-minute tracker with bright red body counts. There are no stacks of coffins. There are no sob stories. Because the people who will die because of the lockdown might not die for years yet. A family that was doing OK, now both parents have lost their jobs, one will remain unemployed for years. The family becomes poor, eats lower-quality food for the next 20+ years. Kids that would have been healthy now get diabetes in their 30s, heart disease in their 40s, and ultimately die of heart attacks in their early 50s, who otherwise would have loved to 80. Or, kid that used to have a healthy home environment now does not. Gets involved in gangs and drugs. Overdoses at 26. Or is killed in gang violence. Or ends up in prison. It takes three generations for that family to recover. Millions of families that were not on this path a month ago are now five steps down it -- and every day, some unknowable number of these tragedies goes from possible to probable, or from probable to all-but-unavoidable. But in virtually all of the cases, even after the fact, you'll never be able to prove that it wouldn't have happened but for the lockdowns. So, we get to pretend the number is zero, instead of unknowable masses.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Mirioron 7y ago
I'm saying that you need to look at both points of data. Imagine you have two countries with 10 million people each. Country A has 50,000 deaths and country B has 55,000 deaths due to the virus. Just looking at this measure, the conclusion is that country A dealt with the crisis better. However, it could be that the measures taken in country A caused more problems for the economy, ultimately leading to the deaths of 10,000 people, while country B's economy recovered swiftly with almost no deaths resulting from it. In this example country B ultimately had the better outcome, despite having more deaths directly due to the virus.
thu2111 7y ago
Four times as many people have already died from COVID-19 Died with SARS-CoV-2, not because of it. As far as I know died "because of" isn't tracked or published by any country. And "died with" doesn't mean much (anything?) because coronaviruses of all kinds are so frequently co-present in natural deaths of old age anyway. For example in 2006 there was what appeared to be an outbreak of SARS in an old people's home in Canada: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095096/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095096/ It turned out to be false positives on the kits and the real coronavirus was a fairly ordinary strain. Nonetheless the measured death rate was 5%. When you see things like this it becomes apparent how carefully statistics like death rate must be used (or not used). We have literally no solid data in this epidemic. Every piece of evidence, every anecdote turns out on investigation to have enormous caveats or be misleading.

Exmoor 7y ago

Suicides is certainly the most obvious and explicit way to measure loss of life from the 2008 recession, but it's certainly not the whole story. Overdose deaths (70,000+ in 2018 in the US), and other addiction-related deaths are probably significantly exasperated by economic crisis. I'm not arguing that the deaths from the virus won't outnumber deaths related to the quarantine, but they will be significant. They will also be much more likely to involve younger people whereas the virus is mostly killing people who are within a 10 years of reaching the average life expectancy for their country or above.

Zenst 7y ago
There will also be suicides related to this event as well, one example https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/german-minister-commits-suicide-after-virus-crisis-worries/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/german-mi...
- Exmoor 7y ago
  Also, likely homicides: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/tenant-suspected-property-owners-death-taken-into-custody/JQOUJVRGQVEJLCFXEZJTV3CYTM/ https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/tenant-suspected-property-o...
  - Zenst 7y ago
    Yes, the impact thru cause and effect is always bigger and will play out in many ways and forms for a while, even once things settle down on the surface, that impact will ripple on for some time.
sgc 7y ago
Most Americans have never had a month off work in their lives. It will probably help mental health for for them at least.
- Exmoor 7y ago
  This comment is mind boggling to me. There is a incredible difference between "I'm taking a month off of work" and "I'm being forced to stay in my home, physically isolated from my friends and forced to be around those I share a home with 24/7, with the possibility of financial hardship in the near or far term." One is a vacation, the other is prison.
  - sgc 7y ago
    It's obviously not vacation, nor is it prison. But the weight of the American rat race is undoubtedly crushing to many.
- tempestn 7y ago
  I don't agree with the initial premise that suppression measures would potentially cost anywhere near as many lives as they would save. That said, I don't think it's reasonable to compare being off work due to a pandemic lockdown or similar circumstances to a month-long vacation. This will cause significant hardship and stress for many people. It's just that without measures to control the virus, you would still have those effects; they would just come due to fear after a bunch of people die, rather than intentional efforts.
  - sgc 7y ago
    I don't think it's a vacation. But I do think it will have some potentially beneficial side effects, as well as the obvious negative ones.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

adventured 7y ago

> There's just no plausible way that a recession following this pandemic will kill more folks than the pandemic itself will, not even close. You're unfortunately very far off in that claim about risk as it pertains to economy. Suicides are a small component of economic risk factors. For example, if you miscalculate what you're doing in India in managing people and the functioning of the economy through this, you could cause famine and kill millions of people. A story from Bloomberg covering the food supply deprivation beginning in India: > ‘We Will Starve Here’: India’s Poor Flee Cities in Mass Exodus http://archive.is/rusMy http://archive.is/rusMy

guscost 7y ago
See also: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/global-recession-halts-decades-of-steady-progress-in-reducing-world-hunger-8204331.html%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/worl... Put together the suicides (which could be worse this time with so many people trapped at home), domestic abuse, drug addiction, and worldwide starvation, and it adds up to a lot of lives. That’s just what I’m halfway confident about so far.

malandrew 7y ago

According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die per day due to poverty. That's over 8 million per year. And that's just children while poverty has been the lowest it has ever been. What do you think is going to happen in developing countries in the next few years? Absolute mortality will likely be around 1% or less once you take into account all those that are asymptomatic and much of this 1% would die in the next decade due to old age and co-morbidities. If poverty doubles (very probable) and the number of children dying dies as a result, it will take 9.5 years just to reach the death toll in children alone. Once you factor adults as well, I wouldn't be surprised if the economic fallout causes more deaths than this flu in less than 5 years. These countries will also never catch up to where they otherwise would have been, so the additional incremental deaths due to the economic fallout will persist in perpetuity.

Zenst 7y ago
If the media plotted a minute by minute uptodate map showing those deaths due to poverty, people's mindsets would change. But the impact and knock on effects of this pandemic, will not exactly help poverty related deaths and without a doubt, exacerbate them.
- vanniv 7y ago
  This lockdown has already guaranteed many more deaths due to poverty. Every day it continues, more are added. But, there is no up-to-the-minute tracker with bright red body counts. There are no stacks of coffins. There are no sob stories. Because the people who will die because of the lockdown might not die for years yet. A family that was doing OK, now both parents have lost their jobs, one will remain unemployed for years. The family becomes poor, eats lower-quality food for the next 20+ years. Kids that would have been healthy now get diabetes in their 30s, heart disease in their 40s, and ultimately die of heart attacks in their early 50s, who otherwise would have loved to 80. Or, kid that used to have a healthy home environment now does not. Gets involved in gangs and drugs. Overdoses at 26. Or is killed in gang violence. Or ends up in prison. It takes three generations for that family to recover. Millions of families that were not on this path a month ago are now five steps down it -- and every day, some unknowable number of these tragedies goes from possible to probable, or from probable to all-but-unavoidable. But in virtually all of the cases, even after the fact, you'll never be able to prove that it wouldn't have happened but for the lockdowns. So, we get to pretend the number is zero, instead of unknowable masses.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Mirioron 7y ago

I'm saying that you need to look at both points of data. Imagine you have two countries with 10 million people each. Country A has 50,000 deaths and country B has 55,000 deaths due to the virus. Just looking at this measure, the conclusion is that country A dealt with the crisis better. However, it could be that the measures taken in country A caused more problems for the economy, ultimately leading to the deaths of 10,000 people, while country B's economy recovered swiftly with almost no deaths resulting from it. In this example country B ultimately had the better outcome, despite having more deaths directly due to the virus.

thu2111 7y ago

Four times as many people have already died from COVID-19 Died with SARS-CoV-2, not because of it. As far as I know died "because of" isn't tracked or published by any country. And "died with" doesn't mean much (anything?) because coronaviruses of all kinds are so frequently co-present in natural deaths of old age anyway. For example in 2006 there was what appeared to be an outbreak of SARS in an old people's home in Canada: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095096/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095096/ It turned out to be false positives on the kits and the real coronavirus was a fairly ordinary strain. Nonetheless the measured death rate was 5%. When you see things like this it becomes apparent how carefully statistics like death rate must be used (or not used). We have literally no solid data in this epidemic. Every piece of evidence, every anecdote turns out on investigation to have enormous caveats or be misleading.