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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 o

• 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.