is this 1 in 5 in people who are otherwise asymptomatic as well? I guess not, or we would be seeing a lot more dead but I wonder if there are any heart attacks occurring in otherwise asymptomatic people and not being marked down as Covid-19 related.
Possible but also important to keep in mind that heart damage does not necessarily translate into an immediate heart attack. It can lead to reduced heart function and a host of other heart-related problems that may not manifest in the form of a fatality for years (if ever). The same goes for the reported lung damage that many Covid-19 victims apparently suffer.
But that was a year ago, so not COVID.
Its easy for us middle-class folks to say "Just stay at home and eat cake!" This whole lockdown thing is divided on class lines. Just look in the window at the McD's drive-thru. Those folks don't have the luxury of staying home.
Break the infrastructure enough that public sanitation stops working properly, and the Covid-19 deaths will be a rounding error in the excess death rate.
Read the shut down orders issued by your state. Read the list of essential jobs listed in those orders. All of those things that you listed are essential jobs, that are still being done. If your factory makes masks, you're essential. If your factory makes screws that are used in a factory that makes masks, you're also essential. If your mine digs up iron ore that goes to a smelter, that goes to a factory that makes screws that are used in a factory that makes masks - you're also essential.
Yes, this means that a lot of people are essential. But even halving the number of person-to-person interactions the average person has leads to a big reduction in transmissions.
[1] I live in Seattle, three weeks into a shutdown, and just two days ago, power crews were doing preventative maintenance on the power line leading into my building.
There will be a cost to all this - small business starts that fail across the board, loans and mortgages in default, cars repossessed, restaurants closing everywhere. Hard to get a job for most people with so many businesses closed, hard to get to a job with no car.
We're all getting behind, it will be hard to catch up again, costs will go up after this is over, everyone will have more debt. It may take months or years for the hiccups to go away.
Cancelled checkups and dentist appointments are an unfortunate consequence of living with this virus. Lifting the lockdown on them may well result in more net damage to people's health at this point - but maybe not. This is one of the first things we need to think about re-opening.
Haircuts are by no means essential, and I don't understand why you threw them into the list.
The problems that arise from this aren't exactly the apocalypse porn of "There will be no food, no running water, and people will be dying in the streets, as civilization falls apart around them."
> There will be a cost to all this - small business starts that fail across the board, loans and mortgages in default, cars repossessed, restaurants closing everywhere.
This kind of economic cost is going to be paid anyways, regardless of whether we take the road of "Tens of thousands of deaths, more lockdown" or "Millions of deaths, no lockdown". People just aren't going to consume as normal in the middle of a raging pandemic. Small businesses will be falling apart, as their owner-operators get sick, and/or die. Jobs will be lost, because not enough people are crazy enough to be booking a vacation in the middle of this.
Until we beat this thing (which probably means a vaccine being widely-available, so... another year at least), any job that can be done remotely, should absolutely be done remotely. And I, for one, won't be setting foot in a cafe or restaurant or going to a conference until this is all over.
And my kids won't be going back to school either. Guess we're homeschooling now.
We are trying to hold the fort until reinforcements (better treatments, vaccines, etc) arrive.
We may also be developing herd immunity, if the previously-infected are less likely to be reinfected. If that’s the case, those presenting antibodies could go back to a normal existence faster.