To date, 15,000 people have died of the coronavirus in the U.S. (although even if it's another disease that kills you, like diabetes or heart disease, they still count it as a COVID-19 death if you happen to have COVID-19; so, the death toll is likely inflated).
On the other hand, one million Americans have been thrown out of work. So, for every COVID-19 fatality, 1,000 people are suddenly unemployed. We've only begun to experience the repercussions of this, as people default on their loans and banks fail, people's savings are wiped out, and communities are destroyed.
How many deaths will this economic catastrophe cause, directly or indirectly, or otherwise contribute to? Does being confined to your home, and more or less isolated, not in itself represent a kind of shortening of your lifespan? Is not stress, such as you might experience when confined to your home during an economic depression, a predictor of early mortality? Would not the death of some 60,000 people who tend to skew elderly in fact save younger workers money in the form of lower Social Security and Medicare taxes; and would not this added prosperity tend, in the scheme of things, to increase the life expectancy of the young as well as the quality of the lives they live in the now? It sounds heartless, but in any thorough and rigorous moral accounting, such things have to be taken into account.
If we're willing to beggar our country in order to save 60,000 people, will China take us seriously when we threaten to fight a nuclear war over islands in the South China Sea? Will Russia take us seriously when, in our capacity as the largest member of NATO, we proclaim our willingness to fight a nuclear war over Estonia?
Abraham Lincoln sent 600,000 American men to their deaths rather than allow the South to secede in peace. Yet we're willing to risk the very existence of our country to save 60,000 lives.
Car accidents kill nearly 40,000 people each year. 650,000 die of heart disease. Nearly half a million die from smoking. The obesity epidemic claims the lives of 300,000 Americans. Each and every one of these deaths is preventable.
I say, lock the old people and the immunocompromised up, give them the best available care and protection, and let the rest of us get on with our lives. The show must go on; the lights must never go out.
