Frankly, people are always dying. Deaths don't automatically outweigh everything. This logic quickly breaks down once you apply it consistently. Traffic accidents are a huge cause of deaths, yet we don't ban all vehicles.

There are massive costs associated with lockdowns, most of which we can probably only judge accurately once everything is over, and certainly there are second order effects which cost lives also. Such as suicides due to depression amplified by social isolation.

Those costs should be factored in. It's not as simple as a blanket "people are dying so everything is justified".

You're talking about death as something abstract. I'm not. I'm saying I would prefer not to die, even if it costs the economy a lot.

Perhaps you'd give up your life, or your child or partner or parent, to save a handful of jobs but that's quite weird in my opinion. Economies can be rebuilt. Dead people can't be brought back.

The situation as it is does not pit option A: "you die right now" vs. option B: "save a handful of jobs". You are still oversimplifying the issue. In reality, both options are just modifying chances, and both options entail a huge number of second order effects. This needs to be weighed. It's not as simple as saying "well option A is literal death, so the other must always be better". And pointing that out does not mean I'd die to save a handful of jobs.

The flu also kills hundreds of thousands of people, and it does so each and every year. So should we be in permanent lockdown? After all, it's lives versus a handful of jobs.

How many of those suicides are from people who are broke for pandemic-related reasons, and could've been prevented had we controlled the pandemic early (i.e, with a strict lockdown)?

Devils advocate: how many of those suicides are caused directly by the restrictions and not the pandemic, how many extra would have lost their sanity due to a stricter lockdown?

Truth is we're not taking much time to measure the non-covid, non economic outcomes

The whole point of a strict lockdown would've been to nip the problem in the bud via drastic measures. Based on the experiences of other countries, it should've lasted about 3-4 weeks.

I think this idea is idealistic. It's easy to say now that we should've reacted immediately. But try just getting public support for drastic lockdown measures when the virus was new enough to have about as much impact on people's daily lives as the latest hospital bombing somewhere in Afghanistan.

I lost my sanity during this year's "lockdowns".

I wish you the best. Hope you get better.

Why does there have to be a dichotomy here? Another option would be to lock down but also to provide for people who will otherwise be ruined by the lockdown.

That seems to be the most humane option. Make it illegal to evict people, provide them with a reasonable base income that allows them to lead a dignified life through the lockdown, and then shut everything down for a little while.

Suggesting that the lockdown is synonymous with loss of livelihood is exactly the problem here. Surely the same elected officials that have the power to close everything down also have the power to authorize emergency payments to those impacted by the lockdown.

> Another option would be to lock down but also to provide for people who will otherwise be ruined by the lockdown.

Well, that's will just establish a beachhead for socialism, and that is reserved for big business.