That being said, I think it does make sense to account for positive externalities. Can you think of others that are lockdown-specific? The classic ones right now are pollution.
> Or look at one of the following sections "General vaccination on the decline". This is a wonderful example of the only looking at negatives.
I'm not sure if that is a great example of only looking at the negatives. This is one dimension where the effects of the lockdown are basically exclusively negative as opposed to being a mixed bag. So this feels like something that absolutely _should_ be mentioned. Particularly when factoring in the irony of it increasing mortality from other non-COVID-19 infectious diseases.
> Imagine that flu vaccination dropped 90% and that flu cases dropped 99%, this thing would report that as a negative because, "hey, look at how many people aren't getting vaccinated".
I don't think this is at all fair either, but I must admit I chuckled a bit. It is a funny thought.
> And then when actually looking at it, it's full of pleas to emotion and claims without any data backing them. Take "Addiction and Overdose", there's no real data discussed (other than historical data about deaths unrelated to lockdowns or distancing or economy). Is there no data that supports the implication (if not outright claim) that lockdown will increase the cost or deaths from addiction/overdose? For anyone reading this, if it feels like it's a good, thorough examination you should absolutely discount any points like this where there's no supporting evidence presented.
So, this is the biggest hole that I personally see in my argument, so I very much agree here. The trouble I ran into is, this is such an unprecedented situation that it would have felt ridiculous if I just started making up mortality predictions. So it felt like a good balance to highlight the _potential_ for increased mortality. I do think that means I likely need to soften the language around lockdown causing more mortality to accentuate the fact that it's merely _likely_ that it does.
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Is there anything else you can think of? Thanks for the feedback.