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Torillian on 18 April 2020
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Nautilus said:
Torillian said:

We can talk about mitigating economic impacts, and cooling down the lockdown, but you should not downplay the number of deaths that could occur from a dangerous, highly contagious respiratory virus like this. There are about 800,000 suicides a year and historically economic depression increases suicide rates about 30-40%. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/suicide-and-the-economy/279961/

"Roy was one of at least 40,000 Americans who took their own lives that year and the next, the two-year span that suicide rate spiked to its highest recorded level ever: more than 150 per 1 million annually." 

This is not a massive increase from the standard levels as we can see from current stats:

"The suicide rate increased 33 percent from 1999 through 2017, from 10.5 to 14 suicides per 100,000 people (NCHS Data Brief No. 330"

Which would be 105 per 1 million. 

And if you look at the great depression in general this did not cause a huge spike in deaths as one would assume based on your concern of greater deaths during economic strife.

https://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17290

So yeah, we can talk about the possible economic strife that this quarantine can cause, but I would need convincing that a global great depression would cause more deaths than the possible 10m that can quite reasonably occur from Corona (could honestly be as high as 100m). 

The same I can say about the opposite.You say about not downplaying the potential deaths of this virus, but you are downplaying the potential disaster, both financial and lifes, that this economic crisis can have.That is the thing: we both care about helping and saving everyone, we just have different approaches, or different beliefs.

I am not in the mood to go searching now for how much they estimate the global GPD will be down, or the estimates of unemployment that that will cause, but it's far more worriyng that for me, and all it's possible consequences, than the direct deaths that the virus will cause.

Just to leave it out there: i don't believe in the slightest in those estimated death tool numbers, especially with many countries already being able to get the virus in control and its deaths decreasing, some of them implementing full lockdowns and others partial ones.Again, personal opinion.

But yeah, I'm now done with this whole corona discussion.Probably gonna come back after 2 or so weeks, to butt heads with you guys again, but I think I have made my point and my view clear.Thanks for the discussion Torillion, it was really nice.

I appreciate an amicable discussion on this as well. My apologies if I took out some level of my frustration at local politics/rallies on you. I understand that people can die from economic hardship, but I haven't found evidence of these huge increases from economic depressions that would need to happen for your concerns on deaths to be plausible in my mind. If we want to talk about life quality as well that's an argument, but I don't think the deaths argument is doable. 



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