Indirect Coronavirus Deaths - Better or Worse ?

redcup342

What will be the Indirect Damage from Self Isolation, Business Failure, Debt, Repossession/Eviction and eventually homelessness/suicide ?

Myself I think the cost from the measures will be much higher, already there are problems here in Germany with Depression and Suicide. Businesses that cannot follow social distancing regulations because they are so small (square meters) have just closed completely.

A knock on effect is everyone working on Minijob (casual short term work contracts) have lost their job and are not eligible for state aid except hardship money (Hartz IV)

Will more people die directly from Coronavirus or from the measures taken to stop the spread of Coronavirus (Lockdown/Self Isolation/Business Closure) ?

Donald Trump

Poll makes no sense.

You might want to have a think about what you are asking and rephrase it

seamus

These are difficult things to properly quantify. And we probably won't be able to in any real way. Can we project? Perhaps.

Suicide is a common one that people mention. That economic devastation and employment will drive people to suicide.

If we consider suicide in an historical sense, suicide rates were dropping up to 2007, when we saw an increase probably due to the recession. Not a spike mind, it was more of a small "hump". Rates went from 10.5 per 100k, to 12.1 in 2011 before returning back to 10.5 in 2014 (and then dropping year on year from there).

If we do some really loose back-of-napkin calculations, we could say that about 500 "extra" people died of suicide due to the recession. We don't yet know what the scale of this recession will be, and the very nature of it is different. So it would silly to try and assume it would be more than 500 extra deaths.

Then you have to compare. If we didn't lock down, how many Covid deaths would we have? Again, very difficult to calculate because we have no good analogue - no country in the immediate vicinity that didn't also lock down. We could make some inferences. If our response was as bad as the UK, we would have around 1,400 extra deaths in this country right now.

If we look North and compare Finland (lockdown) and Sweden (no lockdown), the latter has a death rate 9 times the former. Which suggests that without a lockdown, Ireland could perhaps have 15,000 dead by now.

So even in the most pessimistic forecasts, it seems unlikely that the fallout from the economic crash alone won't be worse than the virus.

But we haven't factored in excess deaths from delayed or cancelled medical treatments, not to mention the mental health effects of lost family members, months of isolation and a permanent state of media-induced fear.

Really only time will tell.

Jim_Hodge

Poll makes no sense. Is it a matter of only looking for responses that agree with you?

hmmm

redcup342 wrote: »

Will more people die directly from Coronavirus or from the measures taken to stop the spread of Coronavirus (Lockdown/Self Isolation/Business Closure) ?

What is the point of this poll - to oppose the measures that were taken?

No-one in government is going to allow hospitals to get over-run while they are in power. No-one. And the public wouldn't want it either.

fly_agaric

Yes, as per above post (seamus) think it is fairly clear the virus would have caused more deaths if the restrictions had not been imposed here and in other Europrean countries.

The only economic argument against them really is that the avoided excess deaths (which would mainly have been of older and poorer citizens) were not at all worth the cost imposed on the country (job losses, business failures, govt. debt and likely tax rises & public sector cuts in future years).

People who were opposed to measures generally don't want to stick to economics and try to invoke the social costs, depression & suicide, damage to children's education etc because it is quite an ugly argument putting a GDP loss value on lives + valuing some over others but if the cap fits...

ShineOn7

A thinly disguised Lift The Restrictions thread tbh

bb1234567

The restrictions will probably cause more deaths than COVID in Ireland yes, but not because COVID is not a threat. The lockdown itself was damaging and will cost lives but as we can see in countries such as Brazil and Mexico and USA who will likely see possibly several hundred thousand deaths due to poor control of outbreaks, COVID takes many many more lives in an uncontrolled setting than any lockdown would. Still no peak has been reached in Brazil or Mexico, who knows how long it will go on for, and the USA may yet reach a peak even higher than the last.