Destroying The Economy Will Create A Different Public Health Crisis
We should at least ask the question: Are we suffering under months-long lockdowns just to exchange one public health crisis for others?

By Georgi Boorman, April 6, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/06/destroying-the-economy-will-create-a-different-public-health-crisis/

Just a couple weeks post-shutdown, the coronavirus talking points have settled in. “Listen to the doctors” is front and center, as journalists and elites obsessing over doomsday predictions beg us not to put “profits over people.” Citizens concerned about the economic fallout are not just asking for a cost-benefit analysis of “lives or livelihoods,” however, but a recognition that public health and the economy are deeply linked. Shutting down the latter may severely strain the former, and the concerns extend well beyond health insurance coverage.

As zealous policymakers train every hose in the country on the COVID-19 fire, the lives of American families are deteriorating by the hour in the flood of extreme caution.

What does public health look like when 1 in 3 Americans lose their jobs in the span of just a few weeks? What happens when intermediate and long-term social and economic prospects are hopelessly uncertain, and people are isolated from friends and relatives for weeks, even months? What happens when young adults, already the loneliest and most mentally distressed generation in American history, are forced into physical isolation from peers, leaving them to fall deeper into a toxic social media vortex?

Increased Risk of Suicide

The link between suicide and unemployment is already well known. According to a 2013 study by Timothy J. Classen and Richard A. Dunn, unemployment duration is the biggest factor in increased risk of suicide, but mass layoffs are “powerful localized events where suicide risk increases shortly afterward.”

They estimated “one additional suicide death for every 4,200 males” and “one additional suicide death for every 7,100 females” who lost their job in a mass layoff. Using the Federal Reserve’s projection of 31 percent unemployment of the U.S. labor force gives us just more than 51 million unemployed Americans. Using a male-to-female worker ratio of 53/47, that level of unemployment, particularly if prolonged, could result in an estimated additional 3,258 women and 6,211 men taking their lives.*

This is the biggest layoff in American history, with 10 million jobless claims flooding employment offices across the country over the last two weeks, and many more likely to come. According to the study, suicide risk is highest between 15 and 26 weeks of unemployment, meaning time is running out to prevent what is likely to be a crisis of another kind. Last week, Knox County in Tennessee reported more suicides than COVID-19 deaths, a total of nine suicides within 48 hours.


-- excerpt, rest at link above --

The other two sub-headings are:

- Exacerbation of the Loneliness Epidemic

- Emergence of the ‘Haves’ and the ‘Have-Nots’

Good points, @Isailedaway

"lingering effects" are what they are after....