People being discharged early is a result of coronavirus, not "the lockdown". Seriously, the problem with pandemics isn't just large numbers of people dying du

People being discharged early is a result of coronavirus, not "the lockdown". Seriously, the problem with pandemics isn't just large numbers of people dying due to coronavirus, it's large numbers of people not being able to receive medical care because pandemic cases have already overwhelmed health services. When there are no ICU rooms left, people who would otherwise survive (car accidents, heart attacks, strokes, etc) end up dying because the necessary level of care isn't possible. When calculating the number of people who have died as a result of a pandemic you need to look at the excess death tally - e.g. how many people died during the pandemic, vs average death rate in prior years. The other thing the article fails to acknowledge is that many of the people who died through not going the hospital may well have died anyway. So again, excess deaths is what matters. Finally, if a hard lock down were actually enforced (like NZ), you bring the numbers down sufficiently rapidly to decrease the length of time of the lockdown, get the immediate load off the health care system, and then because you have a harsh lockdown, you can reopen more afterwards, and not immediately return to lockdown. The various half assed lockdowns in the US demonstrate that "saving the economy" by not actually locking down has only served to damage the economy more by killing more people and increasing the length of time that those half assed lockdowns will need to hang around disrupting the economy.