[Airbornelawyer]

Whenever anyone has tried to do a cost-benefit analysis of the Covid-19 lockdowns and social distancing, the usual suspects denounce him for valuing jobs over lives, for killing grandma. "If even one life is saved," the destruction of the economy is justified, or so it goes.

It is a specious ad hominem disguising as an argument, but it is par for the course for the Left. Recall that criticism of the Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act means you want to poison children, opposition to Obamacare means you want to throw grandma off a cliff, skepticism about global warming and the Left's proposed "solutions" like the Green New Deal means you want to kill the planet, etc.

But I am concerned not just about the social and economic costs, but the cost in lives. As has been noted by a number of observers even very early in this crisis, and has become more apparent as time goes by, the costs are not just jobs vs. lives, but lives vs. lives. Below is a list of observations on this topic. I would appreciate if any of you, especially those with far superior knowledge of biology or medicine than I, could correct any errors or make any additions.

1. The coronavirus response itself. The lockdowns were initially justified under the "flattening of the curve" argument, which meant slowing (not stopping) the spread of the virus to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed. As we have seen, either the "flattening of the curve" was way more successful than anyone expected, or the projections underlying the argument were wrong, but not only were hospitals not close to being threatened, many were significantly under capacity, and many temporary ones were never even used.

However, one consequence of the curve-flattening response apparently not only did not improve the situation, but rather made it worse. This was the decision by several states, notably New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota, to force nursing homes to take recovering but still contagious patients. It was a callous decision, justified as freeing up hospital resources (or more sinisterly, as not wasting resources on old people who were likely to die anyway, which also seems to have occurred in Italy, Spain and elsewhere), and it has cost untold thousands of lives. Untold, because we simply do not know exactly how many of those infected in nursing homes were infected by returned patients, and also because several states including New York seem to be deliberately fudging their statistics. The preliminary numbers we do have, though, are staggering: in Connecticut, at least 70% of Covid-19 deaths are in long-term care facilities, in Massachusetts at least 62%, in Rhode Island 76%, in Pennsylvania 68%. In New Jersey, it is officially "only" 52%, but reportedly the numbers are worse. New York claims only 25% of its Covid-19 deaths are in LTCs, but other sources claim it is closer to half, possibly 10,000 in New York City alone.

This is not new "news". The Spanish Army was reporting finding abandoned nursing homes full of dead bodies in March. Also in March, it was widely reported that Italian doctors were triaging elderly patients as not worth the effort to save. Trucks full of decomposing bodies outside nursing homes in Brooklyn were reported in April. But as more attention to the nursing home issue has been paid of late, politicians and bureaucrats appear to have circled their wagons.

We've known since February with the case of Diamond Princess that this particular coronavirus is far more lethal to the elderly, so many of these deaths were likely unavoidable. But it is clear, especially when compared to the nursing home response in several other states, that many of these deaths were avoidable, and were caused by the nature of the response.

2. Suicide. There is both anecdotal and statistical evidence that the lockdowns have led to increased suicides. There is a widely reported study on the correlation between an increase in the unemployment rate and an increase in suicides, but you do not need scientific studies to understand that an increase in despair and a loss of hope will lead to more suicides.

Furthermore, beyond actual suicides, as Tony Manero noted in Saturday Night Fever, "there's ways of killing yourself without killing yourself." People who have lost hope, lost their livelihoods due to lockdowns, been declared "non-essential", found themselves "socially distanced" from support networks or even basic human contact, will often resort to passive or active higher-risk behavior which could lead to death. Passive behaviors include not bothering with basic hygiene, drinking too much, and taking drugs, leading to greater risk of accidents or infections. I am not as sure about correlating lockdown-related anxiety and depression with active high-risk behaviors, but I have noted that the Cannonball Run record has been broken multiple times and police have reported a large increase in over-100mph speeding tickets. Some drivers may just be taking advantage of a situation, but some may just not care about the consequences. And how many of these rioters don't really care about BLM, but are just enjoying an excuse to get outdoors and act up?

3. Cancer and other diseases and conditions. Either because of fear of contracting Covid-19 if they go to a hospital, or because they think they are being socially conscious and doing their part, many people have cancelled or put off medical treatments, deeming them non-essential or whatever. Biopsies are not getting done, people are cancelling chemotherapy appointments, etc. The potential death toll here could be high, and again many deaths would be avoidable but for the lockdown/social distancing.

4. Stress- and anxiety related deaths. Among the potentially fatal conditions which I understand can be made worse by stress and anxiety are "heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide" (source: American Psychological Association). So besides suicides and cancer deaths, we can likely expect more deaths from other conditions as the stress of lockdowns, loss of jobs and businesses, and destruction of people's livelihoods takes its toll.

5. Pools and parks. This may seem like a minor one, and I genuinely have no idea what the scope of the risks are, but in walking around my neighborhood I have noticed a lot of closed-down pools, water-parks, and ponds and lakes in public parks have become overgrown and fetid due to lack of ongoing maintenance. That seems like a breeding ground for mosquitoes, ticks and other disease-carriers.

6. Masks. The fetishization of mask-wearing is bewildering to me. Even many of those that know better seem to be pushing mask-wearing as a symbolic act. My issue is not just that the typical masks being worn are not effective against viruses, but that they are counterproductive and may cause more harm than good. As even Dr. Anthony Fauci has warned, people are constantly fidgeting with their masks, spreading germs from hands to face that might not otherwise be spread. Furthermore, the vast majority of masks I see are not disposable (though I have seen a marked increase in disposable masks littering the highways and walkways), and are likely being used and reused without adequate cleaning, so they are yet another potential disease vector. They are like the reusable shopping bags that the trendy use to avoid paper or plastic, but which don't get washed and become germ-ridden, except now you are sticking them on your face.

Also, medical professionals please correct me if I am wrong, but I understood one of several reasons the cold and flu season correlates with winter, even though viruses don't thrive in extreme weather, is that people are using things like gloves, scarves, winter coats, quilts and shawls that do not get routinely washed, and these articles become disease-vectors in and of themselves. Your cool cloth mask seems like another one of these.

7. Herd immunity. Again, this is an area of science where I am woefully ignorant. I am not even sure I had ever heard the term "herd immunity", like "flattening the curve" or "case fatality rate", before a few months ago when we all became experts on epidemiology with our degrees from Wikipedia University. But the concept I am familiar with. Having grown up poor in sometimes not the most hygienic conditions, I have noticed for years that I would be less susceptible to various infections than some middle- and upper-middle class contemporaries. Not immune, just less susceptible. I assumed that this was because some low-level exposure to pathogens helped build up your immune responses, and unless you genuinely have a compromised immune system, trying to live in a virtual plastic bubble is not only impossible but counterproductive, and will weaken your immune responses.

I have seen a lot of discussion in news articles and discussion threads about herd immunity, but it is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff and the good information from the bad. So my question is, since the politicians and bureaucrats have moved well beyond "flattening the curve" to any of a number of excuses to maintain the lockdowns and various restrictions on human interaction (the social distancing and masks even after lifting lockdowns for example) for an indeterminate amount of time, at what point, if at all, is it an issue that people are weakening their immune systems? And what potential costs are there to this?

8. Domestic violence. I have not seen any reliable data, but it seems highly likely that the lockdowns may have led to some such incidents, potentially fatal ones. There have been joking memes about spouses killing each other after being cooped up for an extended period, but behind those jokes there may be some tragic realities.