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COVID-19 USA Government Policies: “Staggering 0.89 and 1.37 million excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively”
Related: ethics in medicine, gears of the machine, health, SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19 aka Coronavirus, SSD
Real science is never settled, and anyone who has certainty on such things is not qualified to discuss it
— Lloyd Chambers
RE: The Doctor Is In: Scott Atlas And The Efficacy Of Lockdowns, Social Distancing, And Closings.
RE: Martin Kulldorff, professor, Harvard Medical School: Letter to the editor: Scott Atlas and lockdowns
RE: COVID-19: Great Barrington Declaration by Medical Professionals and Epidemiologists
RE: The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation
RE: Time to Steepen the Curve and Accelerate Infection of Low-Risk People
RE: AIER: “The Pandemic that Killed Debate”
re: THE LONG-TERM IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 UNEMPLOYMENT SHOCK ON LIFE EXPECTANCY AND MORTALITY RATES
As I wrote about all last year, COVID policies will kill many more people than COVID itself.
Making this truly beyond-the-pale evil, anyone raising such issues get vilified; see links above. The failure to rationally assess this issue is the greatest moral failure of our time.
Politicians and the media are choosing (intentionally or through incompetence) to kill many more and far younger people with much longer lifespans later, than far fewer geriatric people with very short expected lifespans now, many of whom would have died within a year from some other cause anyway.
Putting it into relative terms: trading 30 life-years (younger person) for 2-3 life-years (geriatric person) is a gross violation of both medical ethics, and public policy ethics.
THE LONG-TERM IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 UNEMPLOYMENT SHOCK ON LIFE EXPECTANCY AND MORTALITY RATES
We estimate that this unprecedented unemployment shock will result in a 3.01% increase in mortality rates and a 0.50% drop in life expectancy over the next 15 years. Compared to the typical unemployment shock, we find that women (both African-American and White) are disproportionately affected relative to men. Particularly for White women, the COVID-19 unemployment shock is about 4.72 standard deviation larger (about 2.74% in magnitude) than their typical shock to the unemployment rate, by far the largest in relative magnitude with respect to the typical shock. However, African-American men still suffer the largest shock in absolute terms (3.65%, 2.13 standard deviations). As a result, the impact of the COVID-19 unemployment shock on the death rate is large for all groups, but visibly larger for African-Americans and White women.
... the increase in the death rate following the COVID-19 pandemic implies a staggering 0.89 and 1.37 million excess deaths over the next 15 and 20 years, respectively.
...We interpret these results as a strong indication that policymakers should take into consideration the severe, long-run implications of such a large economic recession on people’s lives when deliberating on COVID-19 recovery and containment measures. Without any doubt, lockdowns save lives, but they also contribute to the decline in real activity that can have severe consequences on health.
Conclusion
...the toll of lives claimed by the SARS-CoV-2 virus far exceeds those immediately related to the acute COVID-19 critical illness and that the recession caused by the pandemic can jeopardize population health for the next two decades.
Based on our findings, African American citizens and women will be suffering more profoundly from the coronavirus-driven recession, adding on to their disproportionate adverse outcome in the setting of acute SARS-CoV-2 infection...
WIND: if you value life, then you must set aside “death” in favors of “life years”—there is no other objective metric that can be applied to populations. Thus, a weakness of this study is not using life years explicitly.
The death of a 40-year-old versus the death of an 80-year-old is at least a 5X greater loss.
Giant corporations like Walmart and Amazon have consolidated market share and made out like bandits, the well-to-do have made massive profits in the stock market, Big Pharma is raking in record profits... and the under-privileged are dying with more to die prematurely. All because of government policies.
