The response to the coronavirus pandemic, of mandatory lockdowns of nearly the entire population, for several weeks, may prove to be one of the most egregious cases of self-inflicted social harm the world has ever seen.
It seems as with any partisan issue america jumps on, the party lines are quickly formed, and it's now black or white, you are either for or against.
Your nuance is not appreciated.
The virus is responsible for the economic issues. Lifting the government mandated lockdowns will not change the presence of the virus. Even if the government lifted the lockdown most people will still not consume like they did before. People will not fly like they did before, travel like they did before, eat out like they did before, etc until the root cause is gone.
The lockdown might very well be better for the economy in the long run because it means the root cause is gone sooner. Lifting the lockdown early (or not having a lockdown at all) means the virus will linger around for much longer which means the economy remains in shambles for longer.
You can force people to work, but you cannot force people to consume, and lack of consumption is the main cause of the current economic issues.
The lockdown undoubtedly magnifies the economic damage, given it prevents many people who would otherwise be working, from working, and businesses that would otherwise be operating, from operating.
The only possible rationale I can imagine you having for believing the economic damage without the lockdowns would be the same/worse is that the virus would have hurt productivity even more than the lockdowns did, by killing workers.
But the virus has an extremely low mortality rate for those of working age, and especially those in good health who are disproportionately represented among the most productive, so I don't know how you could reason that absent the lockdown, productivity might have taken an equivalent or larger hit due to more people being infected.
Looking at the available data, it's highly likely that herd immunity, and the decline in the number of deaths per day, would emerge very quickly, and then most people would carry on with their lives.
Countries that ease the lockdown before they have a handle on the virus are in for a lot of pain further down the road. Probably more economic damage as well.
Lockdowns might save lives, and I can't blame public health officials for protecting their community, but I personally fear more lives will be lost due to economic costs. They just might be poorer, quieter lives. And while death is, of course, final, suffering in life should count for something too.
https://www.wfp.org/news/covid-19-will-double-number-people-...
That's a real issue in the developing world; in the developed world the resources exist to buffer the temporary additional low-end economic impact; not doing so effectively is a policy choice (and, in practice, a deliberate active one made when the alternative of providing the aid is presented), not an inherent corollary of lockdowns.
That seems like a pretty sterile way to describe it.
Right now, in the (presumably) developed US, 1 in 5 children don't have enough food, 3x the amount during 2008. That's a result of years of policy choices, but one particularly policy choice caused it to spike. If there's a resource buffer, it's not buffering.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/05/06/the-covid...
Yes, the policy choice not provide the kind of mass aid (whether directly to citizens or through firms in a way which reasons the mass of the citizenry to protect empmoyment and pay) to the population that pretty much every other industrialized country facing this crisis has, even the ones (like Sweden) without mandatory lockdowns.
The US federal response to COVID-19, both in narrow public health measures and broader, including economic policy, measures (and structurally much of this has to be done at the federal level because of the way state and federal financing works) has been nothing short of mass murder by depraved indifference.
The losses in GDP caused by lockdowns will therefore very likely have a cost in lives in the developed world too.
The choice between "saving people" vs "economy" is a false choice. Lockdowns might help the economy more in the long run. People that live in fear of the virus will not consume, and lockdowns reduce the amount of time that the virus is out there.
You can force people to go back to work, but you can't force people to consume.
It might. We're not really sure. Either way, I think OP has a good point. It is not entirely impossible that we do the lockdown, still same number of people die and we also grind economic activity to a halt leading to other kinds of shortages. If this is what will happen, then the lockdown is a would be a bad choice. Sweden actually is banking on this. They might be wrong, but it's not an entirely crazy stance, there is a reasoning behind it.
Given what we saw in North Italy it would have been foolish not to go to lockdown imo.
But with hindsight we might still assess it was the wrong measure.
I suspect we will be debating that for years or even decades.
As for getting a handle on the virus, it's entirely possible that only herd immunity will do that, and the countries delaying that happening with lockdowns are just delaying the inevitable while incurring unnecessary economic damage in the process.
We have already 0.1 million dead.
EU has 445 million people, so more than 1 million can still die 445(1000^2)0.5*0.5%
There is also question about long term health of people who got COVID-19. Based on Japanese study on Grand Princess passengers [0] and some 6 divers [1] all with mild cases from Germany around 50 to 80% of people seem to have damage to the lungs visible on CT scans after mild symptomatic or even asymptomatic infection. Two of the divers had significant oxygen deficiency when doing physical exercise after 5-6 weeks of recovery. The guess of the doctor who was inspecting them is that this is permanent damage that may take years to recover if ever.
[0] https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/ryct.2020200110
[1] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
Edit: I interpreted the number to be in the context of Sweden, as it was mentioned just in the sentence prior. Reply updated to make that clear.
Currently there are little bit more than 0.1 million reported deaths across the EU.
And as I was saying, in the best case scenario, based on the current data [0] 1 million more could die if people would live their lives normally.
But people would not live normally as they do not in Sweden or Belarus and economies would be in downfall anyway.
The difference would be in the number of deaths, long term health issues, as well as in the length of the crisis - probably more like 2 years, or until herd immunity trough vaccination.
[0] https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*G6ql9WUz114Mdwktyp53Mg.pn...
Doesn't around 0.8% of the population die each year normally? So at worst (everyone infected) we'd have a year or two where all-cause mortality roughly doubles (concentrated in people 65+ year olds)? That's a big increase and by no means easy to handle, but surely that shouldn't end or stop the economy like you're claiming.
Still, Belarus mobility statistics according to Google [0] are:
Retail & recreation: -16%
Transit stations: -20%
Workplaces: -25%
Their economic activity is certainly reduced right now. People do not want to expose themselves even if their leaders are downplaying it. BTW - Belarus was probably prepared the best in the world for pandemic with 11 beds per 1000 people vs. 5.8 beds per 1000 people in EU in 2010 [2].
So entering speculation again, IMF is projecting 6% GDP contraction in Belarus [1].
Another data point is Open Table (restaurants reservations) data [3] from USA. Most of the drop in reservations happened before lock-down. People decided to not go on their own - on average 73% down before restaurants were ordered to close. My prediction is that up-tick in states that are opening right now will be very small as well.
[0] https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-04-30_BY_Mobil...
[1] https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/BLR
[2] https://databank.worldbank.org/reports.aspx?source=2&series=...
Of course, activity will decline even in the absence of a lockdown, but far less than if nearly the entire population is forced to shelter-at-home for an indeterminant length of time (all the while failing to build herd immunity).
And people are correct in their everyday choices, herd immunity is just wrong when you have no idea what this virus actually does to people and you can afford to not get sick. If indeed 50% of people including young and middle age asymptomatic/mild cases of COVID-19 lead to permanent lung damage (we don't know!), then "herd immunity" means destroying health of the population, while killing millions at the same time. We are certain that people needing intrusive ventilation will need years to go back to fully normal life, but they may never recover full health.
And I agree, maybe USA, Africa and India can not afford to suppress the virus. Starvation will very likely be bigger killer in those countries. I was and I still am especially worried about India, because I don't see how they could stop exponential spread even with full lock-down. Social distancing is just impossible there. And they have millions upon millions of people that have to work to eat. Thankfully, India seems to be easing lock-down.
But EU economies certainly can afford lock-down. Even Swedish people paid and are paying heavy economical price to stop the exponential growth. But we did suppress the virus, now we can go back to sort of normal life and keep things under control.
When voluntary, each individual can judge whether a particular activity should be continued based on their own circumstances and the particularities of that activity, and give up those activities that provide the least economic return relative to risk incurred.
A cookie-cutter rule OTOH has no such intelligence, and leads to a massive amount of waste, from critical activity being prevented that would have provided a large risk-adjusted social benefit.