The ruling class loves to project dangerous outcomes when fear advances their policy objectives. If we don’t do this some number of persons will experience harm. In the case of the recent flu we’ve heard so much about, it’s hard to find evidence that the action does more harm, but we’ve found some.
Related: The Other NH ‘Body Count’ – Suicide Calls Spike “At a Rate We’ve Not Seen Before”
First, when countries or states shut down or stop commerce the supply chain is disrupted in both directions to the detriment of many. The product could be goods or services. Essential supplies or components of them become unavailable. Procedures, wellness visits, and other matters go unattended. Each of these creates a harm and death curve that may be worse than the fallout from doing nothing.
Then there is economic or personal depression (maybe both), loneliness, desperation, violence, and suicide. The other body count.
UNAIDS wrote that,
A modelling group convened by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS has estimated that if efforts are not made to mitigate and overcome interruptions in health services and supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic, a six-month disruption of antiretroviral therapy could lead to more than 500 000 extra deaths from AIDS-related illnesses, including from tuberculosis, in sub-Saharan Africa in 2020–2021. In 2018, an estimated 470 000 people died of AIDS-related deaths in the region.
One condition (with multiple vectors) in one part of one continent could cause half a million deaths because of how the world responded to COVID19. Stretch the envelope a bit and calculate all the various medical situations and the negative effects for the months of hospital shutdowns and limitations placed on free people by their elected officials?
Now add the possibility that they would do it again.
Millions of sick or dead is a low number.
Over at The Economist, a July piece ponders the effects of lockdowns and other COVID-Related restrictions on the health of children.
The pandemic is harming children’s health. Not that they are dying in large numbers of the virus itself, which seems to affect them only mildly. And not only because of a growing body of evidence suggesting that lockdowns harm their mental health.
I’m not paying to see more (subscription required) but you get the gist.
Another piece estimates a surge in child sex trafficking in another nation, while the BBC reported a 20% increase in babies harmed during the lockdown eight of whom died.
Do the math. There’s a lot of it and no one is keeping track because the list goes on and on without end.
For what?
That remains to be seen but it’s not because of this flu they keep talking about. And even if it were it is time to consider the damage that has been done to millions of people before we even think about doing that again.
