Hacker News Reader

Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

I think historians will look back at COVID-19 as a textbook way not to handle an emergency.

They will point out that 99% of deaths were related to economic effects of our response, not the disease itself.

Hundreds of millions will starve or die in failed states in an economic slowdown, while only hundreds of thousands die of disease.

View on HN

Sorry what? Are your numbers the world or US? In either way I think it's just impossible, no? There can't be hundreds of millions of deaths in the US due to starvation after this I don't think I need to justify this claim. (if you disagree let me know) and I'm willing to bet that death from the disease in the whole world is more than a million easily. OK so the only possible interpretation is you're saying the shutdown is going to kill a lot of people from economic effects in poorer countries? I think this is nonsense. The shutdown is most prominent in richer countries, where it's unlikely to cause massive deaths to starvation. Whether the economic effect has a large toll or not, it will not be 3 orders of magnitude more than the disease, that's just hogwash.

My guestimates were indeed for the world and I expect most deaths to occur in less developed countries.

Economic slowdowns cause some states to fail, leading to civil wars, refugee cities, and famines and other diseases spreading. Thats where most of the deaths will occur.

How do people die from an economic slowdown? Maybe in poor countries but I don't think in a developed country an economic slowdown should kill anybody.

Recession in rich a country push people into poverty as well. In a country where health care is privatized, you die from being poor.

So recession in the US will lead to people dying.

Poverty leads to higher suicide rates, e.g. https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/... . It also leads to people being generally less healthy and dying earlier: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181123135003.h... . If poverty leads someone who's currently 10 years old to die five years earlier, then in terms of loss-of-life-years it's similar to the loss if e.g. an 80 year old is killed by the virus.

Does that also imply that if many people die from economic slowdown, that country should be considered 'poor' or 'undeveloped'?

Maybe countries that feel developed but still experience this should reconsider their policies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com