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Comment by mrfusion | Hacker News Reader

That’s just the tip of the iceberg too. A quick summary of the lockdown harms:

missed hospital visits for heart attacks and cancer screening, cancelled childhood vaccinations, school closures, child and spousal abuse, kids growing up without seeing facial expressions on others, pain from postponed elective (including dental) procedures, food shortages in the third world (and even in developed countries), the highest number of overdose deaths ever recorded in the US, massive economic damage, closed gyms and sports, suicide & mental illness

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And you aren't even considering the effects on developing countries

150 Million pushed into Extreme Poverty by 2021 https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/10/07/c...

168k child hunger deaths predicted in Africa https://apnews.com/article/africa-hunger-study-coronavirus-c...

The effects on developing countries are not just on poverty levels but the natural environment as well. Wildlife conservation effects in East Africa and Madagascar are funded predominantly by tourists being able to come in and look at the animals; state support is meagre. A year of no travel has meant no income and some park staff being laid off, which means opening the door to more poaching and illegal land use.

Vs traumatized from death of relatives, death from overloaded hospitals, food shortages because death of working family members. And why are kids grow up without seeing facial expressions? They are not isolated but spend more time with their parents, what's wrong with the world if this leads to mental health problems. Year after year it was told parents need to spend more time with their children to built up their confidence and now this? Could it ve it's not the lockdown, that causes the mental health problems but the pandemic?

Please tell me where are all these deaths in Sweden, Belarus, Brazil, Florida...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/525353/sweden-number-of-...

So you're telling me that in places like Brazil more people are being traumatized by deaths in overloaded hospitals compared to Westerners (who are less traumatized) thanks to a year of isolation? uhmm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcAYObnlehE&t=2623s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnKke19Ow8Q

Ask yourself, what's the bigger trauma for you. Your partner dies of COVID-19, you can't see your parents for a year.

COVID is not a death sentence for the majority of people that get it.

Neither is the lockdown

Lockdowns cause suffering even if they're not a death sentence.

That's a non question, as if you could have prevented the majority of people from dying of it, lockdowns were about "flattening the curve" they weren't even saving the majority of lives (maybe some) at an incommensurable social cost.

>traumatized from death of relatives

The average age of covid deaths was over 80. I hate to break it to you, but people over 80 don't exactly have a long time to left live. Arguably somebody who is traumatised (as opposed to just saddened) by an elderly relative dying isn't very emotionally adjusted, as dying of old age is inevitable.

What’s more traumatizing is the knowledge that so many people are willing to just throw the elderly under the bus because hey, they are going to die soon anyway. “I gotta eat my Olive Garden, so someone’s granny needs to die 10 years too soon from a preventable illness.”

To put this into concrete terms, imagine the number of breast cancer screenings that were delayed by two or three months--or more, as some people were so terrified by the pandemic that they pushed back appointments beyond that required. How many? Five hundred thousand? A million? Now how many of those might have caught cancer early? All of those are much more dangerous or even deadly than they might have been.

That's one type of preventative treatment. Now picture all the prostate exams, blood work, colonoscopies, skin cancer screenings, etc, etc, etc. Multiply it out and you have a massive scourge caused by the media's promotion of a flu-like disease.

But multiplication is hard.

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