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.