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\nBy Scott W. Atlas, John R. Birge, Ralph L Keeney and Alexander Lipton, Opinion Contributors
\nTHE HILL<\/p>\n
\nBy Scott W. Atlas, John R. Birge, Ralph L Keeney and Alexander Lipton, Opinion Contributors
\nTHE HILL<\/p>\n
Our governmental COVID-19 mitigation policy of broad societal lockdown focuses on containing the spread of the disease at all costs, instead of \u201cflattening the curve\u201d and preventing hospital overcrowding. Although\u00a0well-intentioned,\u00a0the lockdown was imposed\u00a0without consideration of its consequences beyond those directly from the pandemic.<\/p>\n
The policies have created the greatest global economic disruption in history, with trillions of dollars<\/a> of lost economic output. These financial losses have been falsely portrayed as purely economic. To the contrary, using numerous National Institutes of Health Public Access publications, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and various actuarial tables, we calculate that these policies will cause devastating non-economic consequences\u00a0that will total millions of accumulated years of life lost in the United States, far beyond what the virus itself has caused.<\/p>\n Pandemics have afflicted humankind throughout history. They devastated the Roman and Byzantine empires, Medieval Europe, China and India, and they continue to the present day despite medical progress.<\/p>\n The past century has witnessed\u00a0three pandemics<\/a>\u00a0with at least 100,000 U.S. fatalities: The “Spanish Flu,” 1918-1919, with between 20 million and 50 million fatalities worldwide, including 675,000 in the U.S.; the “Asian Flu,” 1957-1958, with about 1.1 million deaths worldwide, 116,000 of those in the U.S.; and the “Hong Kong Flu,” 1968-1972,\u00a0\u00a0with about 1 million people worldwide, including 100,000 in the U.S. So far, the current pandemic has produced almost 100,000 U.S. deaths, but the reaction of a near-complete economic shutdown is unprecedented.<\/p>\n The lost economic output in the U.S. alone is estimated to be\u00a05 percent of GDP<\/a>, or $1.1 trillion for every month of the economic shutdown.\u00a0This lost income results in lost lives as the stresses of\u00a0unemployment<\/a>\u00a0and<\/a>\u00a0providing basic needs increase the incidence of\u00a0suicide, alcohol<\/a>\u00a0or drug abuse, and stress-induced illnesses.\u00a0These effects are particularly severe on the lower-income populace, as they are more likely to lose their jobs, and mortality rates are much higher for lower-income individuals.<\/p>\n Statistically, every $10 million to $24 million lost in U.S. incomes results in one additional\u00a0death<\/a>.\u00a0One portion of this effect is through unemployment, which leads to an average increase in mortality of at least 60 percent. That translates into 7,200 lives lost per month among the\u00a036 million<\/a>\u00a0newly unemployed Americans, over 40 percent of whom are\u00a0not expected to regain their jobs<\/a>.\u00a0In addition, many small business owners are\u00a0near financial collapse<\/a>, creating lost wealth that results in\u00a0mortality increases of 50 percent<\/a>.\u00a0With an average estimate of one additional lost life per $17 million income loss, that would translate to 65,000 lives lost in the U.S. for each month because of the economic shutdown.<\/p>\n In addition to lives lost because of lost income, lives also are lost due to delayed or foregone health care imposed by the shutdown and the fear it creates among patients.\u00a0From personal communications with neurosurgery colleagues, about half of their patients have not appeared for treatment of disease which, left untreated, risks brain hemorrhage, paralysis or death.<\/p>\n Here are the examples of missed health care on which we base our calculations: Emergency\u00a0stroke<\/a>\u00a0evaluations are down 40 percent.\u00a0Of the\u00a0650,000<\/a>\u00a0cancer patients receiving chemotherapy in the United States,\u00a0an estimated half are missing their\u00a0treatments<\/a>.\u00a0Of the\u00a0150,000<\/a>\u00a0new cancer cases typically discovered each month in the U.S., most \u2013 as elsewhere in the world \u2013\u00a0are not being diagnosed<\/a>, and two-thirds to three-fourths of routine cancer\u00a0screenings<\/a>\u00a0are not happening because of shutdown policies and fear among the population. Nearly\u00a085 percent<\/a>\u00a0fewer living-donor transplants are occurring now, compared to the same period last year. In addition, more than half of childhood\u00a0vaccinations<\/a>\u00a0are not being performed, setting up the potential of a massive future health disaster.<\/p>\n The implications of\u00a0treatment delays<\/a>\u00a0for situations other than COVID-19 result in 8,000 U.S. deaths per month of the shutdown, or about 120,000 years of remaining life. Missed\u00a0strokes<\/a>\u00a0contribute an additional loss of 100,000 years of life for each month;\u00a0late cancer diagnoses<\/a>\u00a0lose 250,000 years of remaining life for each month; missing\u00a0living-donor transplants<\/a>, another 5,000 years of life per month \u2014 and, if\u00a0even\u00a010 percent of\u00a0vaccinations<\/a>\u00a0are not done, the result is an additional 24,000 years of life lost each month.<\/p>\n These unintended consequences of missed health care amount to more than 500,000 lost years of life per month, not including all the other known skipped care.<\/p>\n If we only consider unemployment-related fatalities from the economic shutdown, that would total at least an additional 7,200 lives per month. Assuming these deaths occur proportionally across the ages of current U.S. mortality\u00a0data, and equally among men and women, this amounts to more than 200,000 lost years of life for each month of the economic shutdown.<\/p>\n