Covid19 kills. Shutdown kills more.
Deaths of Despair is such a gentle euphemism for suicide, and even for overdoses and other acts of ultimate self-harm. Anyway, Deaths of Despair are now up dramatically due to the Covid Crisis Shutdown. Sadly, Deaths of Despair due to the shutdown may actually outnumber Covid19 deaths when this man-made calamity is finally behind us.
Now comes a report from Northern California that suicides are outnumbering Covid deaths, with one doctor stating that he’s seen a “year’s worth of suicides” in the last four weeks alone.
Every death is a tragedy, but every Death of Despair is also a personal calamity for those left behind. Shockingly, the shutdown has triggered thousands of additional Deaths of Despair, and the river of tears has only just begun. Tens of thousands more victims will likely fall prey to suicide or booze or fentanyl or abuse because of this benighted shutdown.
But it’s not just Deaths of Despair, the shutdown is causing a massive medical disaster across a murders’ row of diseases, and to the underlying health care system itself.
Measles, Mumps & Rubella Oh My
Why isn’t anyone talking about the measles outbreak that is brewing under our noses now? There’s been a DRAMATIC DROP in vaccinations. Measles are bad enough, but what about mumps? Yeah, those vaccinations aren’t happening either. What are mumps anyway? We’re gonna find out. Rubella is the third part of the standard MMR vaccination that every kid in America got for the past half-century. We never needed to know what rubella was, till now. Next year, I fear we’re all know.
The CDC reports a dramatic drop in childhood vaccinations.
The Parade of Horribles continues with the Big C.
Cancer’s coming back big time. Why? Colonoscopies aren’t happening, mammograms either. Hell, cancer victims aren’t even going in for their chemotherapy! That’s how badly the shutdown has been messaged and managed by public health officials at the county, state and federal levels.
Consider this May 7 note from the field: Rebecca Robbins writes in STAT that Routine cancer screenings have plummeted during the pandemic, medical records data show.
This can’t be good.
OK then, let’s continue with the Covid19 Shutdown Parade of Horribles. Next up is stroke. Unfortunates with the tell-tale face droop or slurred words must be attempting to simply walk it off since emergency stroke evaluations are down 40 percent. People are staying away from hospitals EVEN WHEN THEY HAVE A STROKE. This won’t end well.
This intentional act of societal self-harm is 100% due to the shutdown. It’s not just a present calamity, but the opening round of a multi-act tragedy. Indeed, when the shutdown is over and desperate patients rush back to get their tumors removed, stents inserted and other treatments scheduled, they will encounter a medical system that’s in only modestly better shape than Hertz, which just declared bankruptcy. Our medical system, OTOH, is merely almost bankrupt and deeply damaged.
The shutdown has led to hospitals that are nearly empty, other than with Covid19 patients, who never did swamp hospitals outside the Big Apple and are now dwindling in most of the country. Think of a hospital as an airport for sick people and then think of how desperately hurting your local airport is right now. And yet airports will recover faster than hospitals.
Minimize Total Deaths
Stanford’s Dr. Scott Atlas wrote in The Hill last week that all this points to a “massive future health disaster“. Hence, it is clear that to be pro-shutdown now is to acquiesce to more total deaths. Even if Covid19 deaths ultimately outnumber all of the shutdown deaths described above, rendering the headline of this essay incorrect, we must take a holistic approach.
Thus, the correct path now must be to minimize total deaths, i.e., the sum of Covid19 and shutdown deaths. How? Wind-down the shutdown – quickly. Simultaneously, we must encourage people to restart vaccinations, mammograms, colonoscopies, chemotherapy and all the other wonders of modern medicine that have been so cavalierly cast aside.
As to forestalling another wave of Covid19, we know SO MUCH MORE NOW than we knew when the shutdown began. We know that Covid19 doesn’t linger on surfaces. We know it doesn’t get transmitted in most outdoor settings. We know it can’t stand up to sunshine or withstand a stiff wind. We know it mostly kills the elderly. We know to cough into our elbows and wash our hands like we’re auditioning for a role in Rain Man. In short, we know how to stay safe.
Properly mobilized, we the American people can save ourselves, even as we save our hemorrhaging medical system. The time is now. There’s not a moment to waste. Lives are being lost, with collateral damage that is simply beyond estimation.
コメント