In an article on the Children’s Health Defense Website, Dr. Toby Rogers writes:
Let’s examine 3 scenarios: lower bound, mid-range, and upper bound. Following the Brenner (1976) model, these figures all reflect the estimated cumulative impact of an increase in unemployment on mortality over a five-year lag period.
Lower bound. If the unemployment rate increases by 5 points as a result of the various lockdowns, then 294,170 additional lives will be lost, not from coronavirus, but from deaths of despair.
Mid-range. If the unemployment rate increases by 16.5 points (as predicted by Treasury Secretary Mnuchin), then 970,761 additional lives will be lost to deaths of despair.
Upper bound. And if the unemployment rate increases by 10-fold — which is what we are already seeing in several states — then 1,853,271 lives will be lost to deaths of despair from government orders to lock down, shut down, and shelter in place.
The magnitude of the association between unemployment and mortality is higher for men than women and higher in early career and middle career workers than older workers (Roelfs et al., 2011, p. 849). It seems reasonable to assume that the coronavirus economic crash will also disproportionately impact the poor and working classes who lack sizable financial reserves.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/will-deaths-of-despair-outpace-deaths-from-coronavirus/
We are social beings
In an article in the National Review, Matthew Continetti writes:
Past epidemics and natural disasters have carried a high price not just in lives and money. They have also weakened social institutions and eroded “social capital” — the web of networks that bring value to our lives and encourage social reciprocity and solidarity. Professors Arnstein Aassve, Guido Alfani, Francesco Gandolfi, and Marco Le Moglie studied the General Social Survey of the United States in the years before and after the Spanish-influenza pandemic of 1918–19. “Similar to the Black Death, the Spanish flu had long-lasting social consequences leading to a decline in social trust,” they write at the Center for Economic Policy Research. “We argue that this potentially resulted from the experience of social disruption and generalized mistrust which characterized the period.” More disturbingly, they write, in a recent paper for the Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research, at Bocconi University, “Our findings suggest that lower social trust was passed on to the descendants and survivors of the Spanish flu who migrated to the U.S.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/04/20/the-social-costs-of-covid-19%e2%80%88/#slide-1
Two seniors at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs recently committed suicide, resulting in the loosening of social distancing regulations.
A well known study showed how infants in an orphanage who were deprived of touch, but otherwise well taken care of, die.
Recently, Dr. Andrew Fauci of the Presidential advisory team on the corona virus said we may not want to shake hands anymore. Not! Give me a break.
Stop the madness. There is no proof social distancing works. The number of deaths are not greater than for a typical flu season.
It will be impossible to measure the long term effect of these policies on the fabric of society and on the social, emotional and physical well being of humanity.