Covid-19 and Lockdown
I was going to keep my mind and mouth shut about this but I need to ask these questions for my own sanity’s sake.
I have a tendency for self-isolation. I like to write a lot, think a lot, read a lot and many of the things I do besides that are also things that can be done alone such as working out, walking, running, being outside in general. As a consequence of this, self-isolating has always been a natural thing for me. Even so, as we approach the one-year mark for the onset of this crisis I feel this has really started taking a toll on me. I am longing for things I never used to long for; parties, people, company, meaningless conversations…
I think it's easy to underestimate the value of those daily face to face encounters and interactions we have while we’re working, or studying, or going to a gym, or pursuing some other activity we previously took for granted. Now, catching a glimpse of a face while going for a grocery trip is a rare occurrence in some places. And so, as I sit and wait for this to all be over, I wonder:
Are all of these measures we’ve taken in order to slow the rate of infection of covid-19 justified? Obviously, we have to do something about the threat this virus constitutes, but the question whenever we are implementing a new strategy to this end is not just “will this strategy slow the spread of Covid-19?” We also need to ask “at what cost?”
How much are we willing to sacrifice to slow the spread of this virus? I’ve had this discussion with people before and I’ve heard more times than I’d like to recount that “a human life is priceless,” and that we cannot calculate the cost of human life,” which I agree with, of course, but it is also an answer that lacks nuance.
First of all, it is in some sense a hypocritical stance. There are so many other things that kill people and that have been killing people for years, decades or even centuries that we do nothing about, but that might be easier and less costly to hinder than the spread of coronavirus. Examples being things such as fast-food, cigarettes, and alcohol. Yet, we have in these cases decided that it is inappropriate to intervene on the liberties of the people in order to save the lives lost to these causes. What makes the coronavirus so significantly different that we no longer have any regard for people’s liberties?
Secondly and more importantly, the same strategies implemented for preventing people from coming to harm are most definitely also harming people.
A suffering economy means suffering people.
During the beginning of the pandemic, we saw unemployment rates skyrocketing all across the world, in the US the unemployment rate reached levels not seen since 1948, and in some states reached levels higher than the unemployment rate of the great recession.
“According to one study [the one by Bluestone et al.] a 1 percent increase in the unemployment rate will be associated with 37,000 deaths [including 20,000 heart attacks], 920 suicides, 650 homicides, 4,000 state mental hospital admissions and 3,300 state prison admissions.” — Wade Thomas, 2005
This data is both specific to the US and at present outdated, but it does a good job of illustrating the fact that the suffering of an economy is not just about the money lost, it translates very directly to the suffering of people. Some are also speculating that the connection between mortality and unemployment might be even higher in today’s US, with numbers as high as 47 500 deaths per 1% increase in the unemployment rate, which could mean as many as 475 000 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
One in four young adults in the US are reporting recurring serious suicide ideation since the onset of the coronavirus and lockdown.
The mental health pandemic was a pandemic long before the coronavirus pandemic but has gone largely ignored. Since the covid-19 lockdown, the mental health of nations has dramatically declined even further.
CDC report that anxiety and depression levels for young adults have increased by 63% for young adults in the U.S. since the pandemic, with 25% of all young adults (18–24) having suicidal thoughts. Similar trends were observed in the UK. In Norway, reported cases of depression have tripled (to 31% of the population and reported cases of anxiety have doubled (to 28% of the population) since the pandemic.
In the US 7.5% of the population have been infected with the coronavirus, and in the UK that number is 5% of the population. In Norway, where I am from, that number is 1% of the population. Within these percentages, mortality rates seem to lie around 1–2%. (As of 21.01.2021)
Why is it that such drastic measures are taken against the spread of the coronavirus but not against the declining mental health of a population? And I don’t just ask this question in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, but in general. Why do we seem to care about each other in some situations, but not in others?
Covid-19 is not the only source of death in this world, and there are things that are worse than death; tragedy takes so many forms. To me the fact that a third of a population can find themselves disillusioned, depressed and anxious simultaneously is every bit as horrifying as the worst we have seen from this virus till now, if not more so.
A final note
Sometimes in attempting to acquire a desired outcome there are other — very much undesired — outcomes that come along. An example of this being the use of pesticides to protect crops and the absurd amount of birds that die and are driven towards extinction as a direct consequence of this, or the less obvious connection that was made between the collapse of the Yellowstone ecosystem and the hunting-driven extinction of wolves in that area in the early 1900s.
I think that when it comes to the matter of forceful intervention into incredibly complex systems, we should err on the side of caution in all but the most acute and clear-cut cases. Seemingly small measures can have enormous long-term consequences.
