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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 h

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.
asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
It seems like you are assuming a much larger asymptomatic rate than what has been published. Because population fatality rate without healthcare would probably be in the 3-7% range, and true asymptomatic cases are only around 20% (at least based on Diamond Princess data). There are around 1.2 billion people in Africa, yielding a death toll on that continent around 36M souls at the low end. Four years of childhood poverty-related deaths. Even without any public health intervention, a death toll like this would spark a major recession most folks withdrew from economic activity out of fear. Even if you ignored it at the governmental level, it would quickly be impossible to ignore at the social level. Pretending that we can just push through that many deaths is a fantasy. I doubt your prediction of a doubling of extreme poverty would come to pass. The folks we're talking about are already in many cases living at a subsistence level. They are not depending on an export economy to keep their households fed. But even supposing it does, it would take four years of that to make up for the losses due to unchecked COVID-19, and that's assuming that such a scenario caused no economic setbacks, which is just not plausible. Anyway, none of that is going to happen. No political regime would survive sitting idly by as 2-3% of the population expires. So lockdown and public health intervention will ultimately be the order of the day everywhere. The theory that any other approach would do better will not be tested.
- guscost 7y ago
  > would Let’s argue about hypotheticals in a few months when we have more perspective. Both of your lines of reasoning are filament-thin and stitched together using way too many assumptions right now.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    I noticed you were claiming that the Sars Cov 2 pandemic was starting to wind down a week ago. But as of today the situation is much more explosive than it was when you made that claim, basically everywhere except Italy, which is on full lockdown. In much of the world there is every indication that the bad is only accelerating. Do you think that maybe it's your predictions and lines of reasoning that are actually miscalibrated?

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.

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago

It seems like you are assuming a much larger asymptomatic rate than what has been published. Because population fatality rate without healthcare would probably be in the 3-7% range, and true asymptomatic cases are only around 20% (at least based on Diamond Princess data). There are around 1.2 billion people in Africa, yielding a death toll on that continent around 36M souls at the low end. Four years of childhood poverty-related deaths. Even without any public health intervention, a death toll like this would spark a major recession most folks withdrew from economic activity out of fear. Even if you ignored it at the governmental level, it would quickly be impossible to ignore at the social level. Pretending that we can just push through that many deaths is a fantasy. I doubt your prediction of a doubling of extreme poverty would come to pass. The folks we're talking about are already in many cases living at a subsistence level. They are not depending on an export economy to keep their households fed. But even supposing it does, it would take four years of that to make up for the losses due to unchecked COVID-19, and that's assuming that such a scenario caused no economic setbacks, which is just not plausible. Anyway, none of that is going to happen. No political regime would survive sitting idly by as 2-3% of the population expires. So lockdown and public health intervention will ultimately be the order of the day everywhere. The theory that any other approach would do better will not be tested.

guscost 7y ago
> would Let’s argue about hypotheticals in a few months when we have more perspective. Both of your lines of reasoning are filament-thin and stitched together using way too many assumptions right now.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  I noticed you were claiming that the Sars Cov 2 pandemic was starting to wind down a week ago. But as of today the situation is much more explosive than it was when you made that claim, basically everywhere except Italy, which is on full lockdown. In much of the world there is every indication that the bad is only accelerating. Do you think that maybe it's your predictions and lines of reasoning that are actually miscalibrated?