The Health Cost Of Lockdowns- Death Tolls From Increased Suicide, Blood Shortages, And Other Effects

[michael94]

dont want to be mean

 

[LeeLemonoil]

the DOW jones can go to zero and unemployment to 50 percent for all I care. there are tons of , as david graeber calls them "b*llsh*t jobs" that will be lost. the important thing is not to keep people employed in non essential jobs, the important thing is to ensure they still have sustenance and the things humans need to live.

That’s just nonsense.

 

[energyandstruct]

That’s just nonsense.

Uh huh. please explain to me how the lines on a graph are more important than human health

and by the way, even if I did care about the "economy" in aggregate, it's going to be disrupted regardless of whether there is a lockdown now or later. When large portions of laborers become sick (don't just think about death rate, think about how positive cases means quarantines, even "mild" cases mean someone unable to work, while moderate and severe cases become hospitalized for weeks) it's going to disrupt the economy greatly regardless of whether we have a lockdown now. So either way stocks go down, but if you have a proper quarantine sooner rather than later, it could also save lives and not be a waste.

 

[Collden]

Since it's become evident that medical interventions for covid-19 have an extremely poor success rate and healthcare can do almost nothing to mitigate this epidemic, why not just continue life as usual, let whoever will become ill become ill, and be done with it?

 

[LeeLemonoil]

Stocks going down is not a virtual line but many people losing savings and retirement pensions. Businesses losing ability to finance themselves. Unemployment and poverty will cost way more lives than the 0.1-0.3% lethality rate of CoV2.

The current system is certainly flawed and results in many undesirable conditions for many people the world over.
But it also provided unseen wealth, security and democratic power to many people.

You seem to think that crashing the capitalistic system will by some woundrous mechanism result in ending of estrangement/bull**** jobs, shared work hours and everyone will be provided with what humans need.

The contrary will be true. Neo-Feudalism or corporate Fascism might come. Basic universal income / provision is poverty for the masses

 

[energyandstruct]

Since it's become evident that medical interventions for covid-19 have an extremely poor success rate and healthcare can do almost nothing to mitigate this epidemic, why not just continue life as usual, let whoever will become ill become ill, and be done with it?

I don't think all medical interventions have a poor success rate. Intubation does, and is extremely unpleasant. thats why i have no intubation on my advance directive. But for moderate cases, intravenous fluids and oxygen can help.

But also as I pointed out in my last comment even if you said "**** it" and just decided to let people with underlying conditions and the elderly die, which I don't think we are up for as a society, the sheer amount of people infected even without a lockdown would massively disrupt the economy. What a lot of people miss is that what is called a "mild" case of covid-19 just means a case that doesn't need hospitalization, but can be pretty severe in terms of causing a loss of function. If 50 percent of the workforce simultaneously came down with a nasty flu, that would badly affect the economy.

Secondly, a ton of the underlying conditions that make people vulnerable to this are very, very common, so it's not just some tiny percentage of old people that would die.

 

[energyandstruct]

Stocks going down is not a virtual line but many people losing savings and retirement pensions. Businesses losing ability to finance themselves. Unemployment and poverty will cost way more lives than the 0.1-0.3% lethality rate of CoV2.

There are always going to be some people that financially rely on something that is socially unnecessary and eventually gets phased out. Like coal mining, or VHS technology, or the huge amount of people employed in private health insurance jobs with the sole purpose of maximizing profit and maximizing "efficiency" (in reality maximizing fragility with a false idea of efficiency that fails to account for necessary redundancies).
It's not a good argument to say "oh some people have their pensions wrapped up in this, so we have to do drastic things to resuscitate this system that can't breathe on its own". It's better to rip the bandaid off now rather than later.

What I am saying is that if a job or industry is not socially necessary, it should be phased out. We live in a post scarcity society with increasing automation and people can still be taken care of in terms of sustenance, housing , etc, without the charade of these BS jobs. Look at las vegas. All the casinos are shutting down and there are tons of empty hotels, yet they are quarantining homeless people in parking lots. That is the essence of this BS. There are resources right there for them to utilize but because of this system we can't just allocate the resources where they're needed, because that would decrease the (inflated) value of the commodity (hotel rooms) and make people realize that we could just house people the whole time, puncturing this fiction of scarcity.

So, I have sympathy for people whos money is linked to the stock market, but its not as if the system crashing means they need to starve. The government has to massively bail out all these industries, like the airline industry, to keep the economy whirring. If we have to do that much to resuscitate the economy, maybe better to let it die? I mean it's not as if in all human history there haven't been pandemics this bad. If we cant shut things down for a month without totally destroying the economy beyond repair, maybe the economy is fragile and intrinsically flawed?

I could be wrong, it could be that this won't be the end of capitalism, but I'd like to see the experiment followed through with.

You seem to think that crashing the capitalistic system will by some woundrous mechanism result in ending of estrangement/bull**** jobs, shared work hours and everyone will be provided with what humans need.

The contrary will be true. Neo-Feudalism or corporate Fascism might come. Basic universal income / provision is poverty for the masses

I mean you have a point here but I don't think it really differs from mine. I would allow for the possibility of the government using Universal Basic Income as a desperate way to pander to the masses and hysterically try and keep the economy alive. I just don't think this will work. But either way, it's a win win. Either the masses get UBI, which is better than what we had before (it has some superiority to byzantine, means tested welfare programs, and even Libertarians have praised it for its simplicity), or we get the end of BS jobs and capitalism.

I think that we will see a massive shift in the political landscape in which even conservative political parties start including UBI as part of their platform. The only reason this isn't happening in the US yet is that we haven't reckoned with how bad things are. Once the pandemic peaks, i'm sure trumpbux or romneybux will become a Republican mainstay.

What I don't see, is if you think that market forces are intrinsically good... why can't they survive a small lockdown without needing huge bailouts? I mean, like I said, pandemics aren't unheard of in human history, although pandemics in a globalized, hyperconnected supply chain and overpopulated world w/ huge reliance on service economy jobs etc probably are... So if capitalism can't survive a little pandemic, maybe it doesn't deserve to survive.

 

[LeeLemonoil]

Epidemics are a normal, regular occurrence. And the economical systems have survived them, always. But those were epidemics and not pandemics and economies were different than the hyper-refined capitalism and financial system of today.

what you fail to realize is that every epidemic had a massive fallout with destroyed existences, loss of life, political upheaval. For years. In hindsight, the systems still stood. And this will Happen with the current pandemic.

We will see massive social and political turmoil over the coming years in the western democracies. Leftwing ideas of a socio-ecological transformation of the system will become more attractive and widespread - but not among those who sit at the top and really determine the events..
And, more important. However attractive these ideas might become, they won’t be set in motion early enough (if ever) too save millions and millions from the consequences of the crash. These millions are lost for that cause forever - to the contrary, they will turn to radicalisation on the right side of the spectrum. Resentfulness, Xenophobia, fascism, authoritanism. They will either bow to anyone playing to these instincts or will simply resignate and play no sociological role whatsoever apart from being exploited and enslaved proles. More so than today in both quality and quantity.


An even more wicked danger: Said socio-ecological transformation is already instrumentalized and heavily influenced (in the sense of manipulated) by malign elites that many leftist prefer to ignore or asses wrongly.
You believe Blackrock, Soros, Gates et. al. want to protect the planet and the poor downtrodden all of a sudden. Oh yes, as Long as it serves their goals. And the green-left to their bidding without noticing

What you seem to want, a juster modern order, would need a true revolution. Not inn the ballot box- you’d need to sweep away layer upon layer of entrenched elites from the far-right up to the financial elites with more refined, well thought out means and ideas of rule in place.

That will never happen.

This crash change everything. For most to the worse. Sadly, some of the most affected delude themselves that something positive will come from it.
By itself, by some fluke, because humans are essentially „good“? **** me, no way.
By a hard, long, bitter fight? In theory, yes.
But revolutions like in the 18th-20th Century had a chance. Now, with mass surveillance and ever refined ways of subduing and manipulate in place, no longer.

 

[energyandstruct]

You believe Blackrock, Soros, Gates et. al. want to protect the planet and the poor downtrodden all of a sudden. Oh yes, as Long as it serves their goals. And the green-left to their bidding without noticing

See it's hard to have civil conversations, which I thought we were having until now, when you just totally strawman your opponents views.

I haven't said anything about Gates or Soros or supporting anything they say.
Many of the countries that effectively dealt with this had very heterogeneous agendas and systems of governance but they all had some level of competence which our govenrment lacks. For example china is very centralized, authoritarian govenrment and South Korea is a democratic, capitalist state, but they both dealt with this effectively.

So if you are saying that anybody who believes this pandemic is a real threat is wrong just bc Bill Gates has also said that that is just as moronic as saying the sky must not be blue because Bill Gates said its blue.

 

[energyandstruct]

Epidemics are a normal, regular occurrence. And the economical systems have survived them, always. But those were epidemics and not pandemics and economies were different than the hyper-refined capitalism and financial system of today.

I mean pandemics have also occurred throughout human history.

But
Okay so we mostly agree, except if you think that this hyper refined ans specialized capitalist system cant survive the shock of a pandemic, why should we attempt to save it. What about it is so good and special that throwing tons of taxpayer bailout money and endangering peopels lives , is worth it? What value does it provide that is so unique?

what you fail to realize is that every epidemic had a massive fallout with destroyed existences, loss of life, political upheaval. For years. In hindsight, the systems still stood. And this will Happen with the current pandemic.

Actually, the Black Plague resulted in many political and economic changes. It didn't wholly overthrow feudalism on it's own, but led to better wages for the remaining peasants, and laid the groundwork for feudalisms obsolescence. It apparently led to the end of seigneurialism /manorialism, which was a type of feudalism. Consequences of the Black Death - Wikipedia

Now I am not saying that this pandemic will be anywhere near as nasty as the black plague, but it doesn't have to be, death toll wise, to change things. Overpopulation and hyper connected, globalized society, with "just in time", fragile supply chains, basically means that even a pandemic 100th as bad as the black plague will heavily shock the system, possibly beyond repair.

It's hard to make perfect historical analogies, but we can still look at that example and see that its perfectly possible society doesn't remain the same post Covid.



I am not saying it's a certainty that this pandemic will cause some beautiful, harmonic left wing society. I'm not even sure I would call myself left wing. I'm largely apolitical. But I think its pretty likely that it will cause a massive restructuring of the economy and society, for better or worse.

 

[Regina]

Epidemics are a normal, regular occurrence. And the economical systems have survived them, always. But those were epidemics and not pandemics and economies were different than the hyper-refined capitalism and financial system of today.

what you fail to realize is that every epidemic had a massive fallout with destroyed existences, loss of life, political upheaval. For years. In hindsight, the systems still stood. And this will Happen with the current pandemic.

We will see massive social and political turmoil over the coming years in the western democracies. Leftwing ideas of a socio-ecological transformation of the system will become more attractive and widespread - but not among those who sit at the top and really determine the events..
And, more important. However attractive these ideas might become, they won’t be set in motion early enough (if ever) too save millions and millions from the consequences of the crash. These millions are lost for that cause forever - to the contrary, they will turn to radicalisation on the right side of the spectrum. Resentfulness, Xenophobia, fascism, authoritanism. They will either bow to anyone playing to these instincts or will simply resignate and play no sociological role whatsoever apart from being exploited and enslaved proles. More so than today in both quality and quantity.


An even more wicked danger: Said socio-ecological transformation is already instrumentalized and heavily influenced (in the sense of manipulated) by malign elites that many leftist prefer to ignore or asses wrongly.
You believe Blackrock, Soros, Gates et. al. want to protect the planet and the poor downtrodden all of a sudden. Oh yes, as Long as it serves their goals. And the green-left to their bidding without noticing

What you seem to want, a juster modern order, would need a true revolution. Not inn the ballot box- you’d need to sweep away layer upon layer of entrenched elites from the far-right up to the financial elites with more refined, well thought out means and ideas of rule in place.

That will never happen.

This crash change everything. For most to the worse. Sadly, some of the most affected delude themselves that something positive will come from it.
By itself, by some fluke, because humans are essentially „good“? **** me, no way.
By a hard, long, bitter fight? In theory, yes.
But revolutions like in the 18th-20th Century had a chance. Now, with mass surveillance and ever refined ways of subduing and manipulate in place, no longer.

You're right. The worst kind of Robin Hood malign elites.
It's been going on bit by bit. But this is breathtaking. It's despicable.

 

[LeeLemonoil]

Apologies, I didn’t mean to be as hominem and yes, it’s weak argumentation if Bill Gates-Strawmen are used.
I can’t express myself in English adequately to the level of my thoughts, often resulting in oversimplification or simply poor presentation of arguments.

I also realized the Moment I wrote it that of course massive epi-or pandemics resulted in sociological and economical change.
It‘s more the time and scale of that changes that concern me. I doubt that the scope and time that a drastic, fundamental change in the current system required is available or possible. Even if so, the gap between the now and the improvement is Long and filled with the Mysery of those who now lost their work and pensions.

I‘m also sceptical that such an eventual improvement of society will come to pass. Why?
Former such changes came „naturally“ as the result of causative chains. People were mostly ignorant of these causations or every action they took to influence of the causation chain itself became part of it.
Today, there are players with unprecedented knowledge. Historical and sociological lessons learned, means of propaganda, algorithms, biological knowledge that predict how humans react, AI.
The ability to calculate, perceive and influence turn of events is refined and powerful like it wasn’t before. It might already be sufficient to „engineer“ developments - offsetting the semi-random causation chain - thus preventing developments that serves others than who those players designate to.

Also, in every Revolution most elites adapt and survive or new elites evolve that eventually become corrupted. The socio-ecological movements in the west already bear many hallmarks of totalitarian waiting to happen.

 

[LeeLemonoil]

What if 50% of every US or Italian or German citizens get unemployed due to this crisis and the state prints money to bail out everyone without resurrecting the former economic with all its bull**** jobs.

What would you/we deem appropriate what a unemployed, average family should have?

A house. A garden. A flat. Means of unrestricted mobility - be it a car or free transport infrastructure? What kind of food and how much? Bread and meat, fresh vegetables, wine or soda?
What are they allowed to do in their past-time? How many set of clothes?

The distribution of goods, even in a post-bull**** automated surplus economy will be heavily fighter over in the beginning. Can that happen in a civilized manner in an empovered Society? Who will lead such a debate? And and and... I can’t see it happen without heavy fallout and violence in the process

 

[Regina]

Apologies, I didn’t mean to be as hominem and yes, it’s weak argumentation if Bill Gates-Strawmen are used.
I can’t express myself in English adequately to the level of my thoughts, often resulting in oversimplification or simply poor presentation of arguments.

I also realized the Moment I wrote it that of course massive epi-or pandemics resulted in sociological and economical change.
It‘s more the time and scale of that changes that concern me. I doubt that the scope and time that a drastic, fundamental change in the current system required is available or possible. Even if so, the gap between the now and the improvement is Long and filled with the Mysery of those who now lost their work and pensions.

I‘m also sceptical that such an eventual improvement of society will come to pass. Why?
Former such changes came „naturally“ as the result of causative chains. People were mostly ignorant of these causations or every action they took to influence of the causation chain itself became part of it.
Today, there are players with unprecedented knowledge. Historical and sociological lessons learned, means of propaganda, algorithms, biological knowledge that predict how humans react, AI.
The ability to calculate, perceive and influence turn of events is refined and powerful like it wasn’t before. It might already be sufficient to „engineer“ developments - offsetting the semi-random causation chain - thus preventing developments that serves others than who those players designate to.

Also, in every Revolution most elites adapt and survive or new elites evolve that eventually become corrupted. The socio-ecological movements in the west already bear many hallmarks of totalitarian waiting to happen.

Precisely correct. And your written english is eloquent and hard-hitting in its effectiveness.

But even a year ago, I was out walking my dog during the day, during the week. A police office pulled over and asked me what was I doing out. What did I do. Why was I not at work. I didn't answer him at all.

 

[energyandstruct]

It‘s more the time and scale of that changes that concern me. I doubt that the scope and time that a drastic, fundamental change in the current system required is available or possible. Even if so, the gap between the now and the improvement is Long and filled with the Mysery of those who now lost their work and pensions.

But my point is that drastic changes are going to happen regardless. The economy is going to be radically restructured and people will lose their jobs. The question is whether we are going to try and resuscitate capitalism or not, not whether we choose for radical changes to happen or not happen. (They will happen regardless)

I‘m also sceptical that such an eventual improvement of society will come to pass. Why?
Former such changes came „naturally“ as the result of causative chains. People were mostly ignorant of these causations or every action they took to influence of the causation chain itself became part of it.
Today, there are players with unprecedented knowledge. Historical and sociological lessons learned, means of propaganda, algorithms, biological knowledge that predict how humans react, AI.
The ability to calculate, perceive and influence turn of events is refined and powerful like it wasn’t before. It might already be sufficient to „engineer“ developments - offsetting the semi-random causation chain - thus preventing developments that serves others than who those players designate to.

I think you overrate how many players with unprecedented intelligence and omniscience there are. Despite all the myths AI are not gods and the singularity has not happened.

All of the villainous bankers that stand to lose the most from this, like Lloyd Blankfein , are actually urging people back to work, so the so called illuminati is on the opposite side of what I am calling for. and it makes you wonder, if these bankers are so intelligent and have so much control of the markets , how come they didn't see this coming?

This is why I fundamentally disagree with many conspiracy theories, because they overrate the amount t of omniscience and intelligence of key players.

The pandemic isnt even a "black Swan", it is not unprecedented or unpredictable and yet basically every capitalist and banker failed to predict it. So I don't think natural changes or revolutions are impossible bc of AI or central banker illuminati.

Everyone who believes in those kind of conspiracies puts too much faith in the ruling class.

What if 50% of every US or Italian or German citizens get unemployed due to this crisis and the state prints money to bail out everyone without resurrecting the former economic with all its bull**** jobs.

I mean, if you are implying it would be bad to print money to pay people instead of resurrecting their jobs, bc it would be deflationary, I feel like that would ignore how we've printed so much more money just to hand out to corporations that cant weather this, like airlines and stuff.

I guess printing money for unemployment could be deflationary at a large enough scale but I don't see how it's a worse outcome than bailing out huge corporations that debt have essential roles.

What would you/we deem appropriate what a unemployed, average family should have?

A house. A garden. A flat. Means of unrestricted mobility - be it a car or free transport infrastructure? What kind of food and how much? Bread and meat, fresh vegetables, wine or soda?
What are they allowed to do in their past-time? How many set of clothes?

The distribution of goods, even in a post-bull**** automated surplus economy will be heavily fighter over in the beginning. Can that happen in a civilized manner in an empovered Society? Who will lead such a debate? And and and... I can’t see it happen without heavy fallout and violence in the process

Fundamentally, we have a level of overpopulation that is unsustainable and probably causes a lack of biodiversity that causes viruses like this to emerge. And causes many social problems. So even in a post scarcity society I wouldn't expect people to just get along. So I agre . Things wouldn't be harmonious necessarily.

But that doesn't mean keeping things the way they were before the pandemic is necessarily good. I don't believe in any utopian vision, but I do think that if just a month of shutdown would cause the loss of any business, that business was too fragile to survive in the first place.

So yes, I think it would be preferable to print money to pay people not to come to work and not to spread the virus, rather than to print money to pay dinosaur industries that shouldn't exist to keep existing.

I also don't claim that this would solve all existing problems but it would solve many. Just reducing labor hours would actually do a lot to help curb pollution and emissions.

 

[Sofia]

I thought homeless people exist because they have health problems and modern medicine makes that even worse. You can give them shelter, but I have a feeling they need vitamins B instead.

 

[energyandstruct]

But even a year ago, I was out walking my dog during the day, during the week. A police office pulled over and asked me what was I doing out. What did I do. Why was I not at work. I didn't answer him at all.

I think it's good for public health that people get fresh air , and this ideally shouldn't be incompatible with a quarantine.

Part of the problem is population density and overpopulation making it hard for people to social distance without running into others, but even in fairly high density societies there are ways to lock down non essential businesses and prevent virus spread that don't involve locking people inside sick buildings.

 

[energyandstruct]

I thought homeless people exist because they have health problems and modern medicine makes that even worse. You can give them shelter, but I have a feeling they need vitamins B instead.

This seems drastically oversimplified.

I don't think there is any proof that all homeless people are homeless bc they need b vitamins.

Healthy shelter (which I think existing shelters may not be due to public housing having mold issues) can reduce stress and help with healing process in of itself and should probably be a priority before supplements in terms of health. It's a basic human need

 

[Sofia]

People lived in nature for millions of years. It their bad health that is the problem.

 

[energyandstruct]

People lived in nature for millions of years. It their bad health that is the problem.

Yes, but being homeless in a city is not living in nature and even hunter gatherers generally had some form of shelter, especially depending on climate!

Also a modern homeless in the city lifestyle is way more stressful than just being a hunter gatherer . Police will arrest you for sleeping various places, there are tons of crowds and people that will hurt or rob you, tons of noise. Etc.

And many of the US cities have weather that is formidable without shelter. Do you really think people can be okay in snow or freezing rain without shelter? I don't think that traditional societies that lived in snowy climates lived without shelter.

In the southwest US, the Hopi Indians built adobe and stone bunkers that went deep into cliff walls, for the purpose of shelter.

Many traditional societies have done this and it's not only a part of modernized societies.