Balancing Acts

I have recently brought up an article on possible long-term effects of C19 and not long ago, an update on possible effects of the economic shutdown.  Thank you for your comments.  I do want to make it clear that these are both areas where there are tradeoffs, and I try to be mindful of that, not simply stating advocacy statistics on one side.  There are still no excess suicide numbers I can find, and I would be suspicious of all estimates.  However, I think it is probable there will be some.  People do react badly to hard events.  We do see increased suicides, substance abuse, domestic violence, etc in economic downturns.  Because this one is different, in that parts of it are clearly temporary and there is less stigma attached to job loss (I think), response will be different as well.

Children, not only adults, are also somewhat cooped up and limited in their activities.  Children need to be kept busy, they need structure, so there will be some deterioration of behavior, of them getting into fights with each other, getting into mischief, getting on their parents’ nerves. There will be more abuse, mutual abuse, criminal activity.  On the other hand, they aren’t going to get beat up at school as much, and that is often the most dangerous area of their week. They will have contact with smaller circles of friends, which means less mischief.  There has been a push, especially from conservatives recently, to encourage more unsupervised time for children, and that is happening.  So on balance is this going to be an improvement or deterioration?  We don’t know.  It will be individual, certainly, good for some and bad for others.

I will note again that shutdown and lockdown are not the same thing.  There was going to be a lot of shutting down anyway.  Governments added to that. We can only estimate the percentage at this point.  I suspect that is variable as well.  In some industries, the government declarations did not create any limits that weren’t going to be there. Airlines are devastated, and that ain't changing for a while.  In others, the government actions made a large difference. I read an evaluation that in summary said “Well, we should have shut down the major urban areas sooner, and the rural areas later.”  That would have been better in general Jasper, yes.  When we perfect time travel we’ll do it that way next time.  Do you think those Democratic cities would have gone along with a shutdown two weeks earlier, when Democrats were still saying there was no real problem? (Remember those days? It was just crazy racist China-haters on the right who believed this was going to be a pandemic? The WHO assured us things were localized?) And even that strategy would have had great holes.  Shutting down LA or Dallas sooner would have been worse for their economies for no advantage. Also, lockdowns have been done by state, not by population density. The urban/rural difference has been enormous in many countries, so that would have been a good rule of thumb. Except not always, only about 70% of the time so there would have been major errors. Paris is not the trouble spot in France. The debate over the last few months in the US has been over whether it should have been done at all, or at all in some states.  Now that we have seen that reopening does result in at least some increase, especially in urban areas because of higher contact, we can put that on our time travel list as well: Note to governors: Maybe county-wide orders or targeted orders would be better.  You’re welcome. As we have previously noted, that’s not perfect either, as rural hospitals can be more easily overwhelmed.