More Perspective On COVID-19

We’re all now familiar with the term “flattening the curve”. It’s working, and we’re thankful for that. But not much has been said by governments or the news media about the negative effects of shutting down a large portion of the economy.

We knew people would lose jobs, and we knew some businesses would go under or struggle to stay afloat, but here’s a list of things that were hardly mentioned, and are still hardly talked about (I’m citing the following from memory. I don’t have the links saved, but I can tell you that most of the articles I read were from reputable sources, such as the Wall Street Journal. I’m not able to break it down by country either):

• Many hospitals are seeing as much as a 50% drop in emergency room visits, due to people staying home in fear of catching COVID-19 from a visit to the hospital.
• Heart attack and stroke patient visits to hospitals are down by about 50% in many places, likely due to the above fear. How many are dying at home that could have been saved?
• Domestic violence has increased.
• Suicides have increased.
• Child vaccinations for other diseases, such as Measles, are down significantly, because many parents are afraid to take their kids to a hospital or doctor’s office.
• In some cases, vaccinations have been halted, such as Polio vaccinations in parts of Africa.
• Research on other diseases has slowed and even stopped in some cases, as some researchers are staying home instead of working at their labs or have diverted attention from other diseases toward COVID-19.
• Even in a rich country, the U.S., there’s been an increase in the number of parents claiming that they don’t have enough food for their children, because of supply chain disruptions. In poorer parts of the world its worse.

One positive side effect of the shutdown, other than the slowdown of COVID-19 deaths, is fewer deaths and serious injury from motor vehicle incidents, since not as many people are driving. This effect could be long-lasting too, since the pandemic has made it likely that more people will work from home even after the pandemic has subsided.

Carbon emissions and air pollution have also decreased. However, pollution and waste in general, may not have gone down, because of all the gloves, masks, gowns, hand sanitizer bottles, etc., being used to combat COVID-19.

It’s too soon to tell what the net effect will be from everything that’s been done and will be done to slowdown the spread of COVID-19. But it’s quite possible that in the end the damage from the shutdown could be as bad or worse than if we had done the social distancing without the shutdown. Whether that ends up being the case or not, there should certainly be more discussion about it.

I was wrong when I said in another article that maybe over-estimating the dangers of COVID-19 is necessary to make people take it seriously (though it was more of a question than a statement). No, there should be no exaggeration about that, nor about the negative effects of the shutdown. We should discuss all the facts as they are.