[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by tschock

Thanks for the article. I generally agree with the premise of the article. A couple of things, not that I disagree with, but to clarify where I'm coming from.

The subtitle: "Modelling suggests that by the end of 2021, some 18 million people had died because of the pandemic"

And also in the article: "But he stresses that such estimates also include deaths from other causes. More research is needed, he says, to separate deaths caused directly by COVID-19 from those that are the indirect results of the pandemic, such as those of people who did not have COVID-19 and died because of inadequate medical care in overwhelmed hospitals."

But I also think the more accurate take wouldn't be because of the pandemic, but because of how we handled the pandemic. When you warehouse COVID positive patients with other elderly patients, you don't get a good outcome. When you negatively impact peoples lives by limiting their ability to perform their jobs in a relatively safe environment (ie those working outdoors), the stress of 'where does the next paycheck come from' has a definite health impact. I could list many other examples of the impact of COVID that needs to be appropriately balanced against the absolute numbers of the 'death toll' side.

I will say it again that measuring deaths alone and even factoring in excess death models does not give the complete picture. What we leave out of the other side of the equation is the negative impact of the 'years lost' of those who were negatively impacted by the policies that were put in place to address the pandemic. And there were a number of stupid ones that we put in place even within the context of what we knew at the time. It will be years down the road before we'll even be able to model all the 'years lost' of people who did not die with COVID.

Just speaking neutrally, yes there are always trade offs. There has been a great cost, particularly I think among young people, of social isolation, for example.