A recent study shows that anxiety and social disruption because of the coronavirus could destroy 7 times more years of human lives than can be saved by strict lockdowns.
The study, conducted by Just Facts, computed based on a broad array of scientific data that stress is one of the deadliest health hazards in the world, and stay-at-home orders, business shutdowns, media frenzy, as well as legitimate concerns about the virus can ultimately cost more lives than lockdowns can save.
“This research is engaging and thoroughly answers the question about the cure being worse than the disease,” said Joseph P. Damore, Jr., M.D., who reviewed the study.
Just Facts compiled mental health studies showing that one-third to one-half of all U.S. adults have been “substantially compromised” by reactions to the pandemic, citing several examples including a survey from the American Psychiatric Association, showing that at least 36% of adults say the coronavirus is “is having a serious impact on their mental health.”
A Kaiser Family Foundation study put that number even higher, showing that at least 45% of adults believe the virus has negatively affected their mental and physical health.
Respondents in these surveys cited stress over grounded flights, anguish over death of loved ones, media outlets overstating the dangers of the virus, government stay-at-home orders, business shutdowns, loss of work, and other negative effects.
After compiling the stress numbers, the study concludes that at least 16.8% of 255,200,373, or 42,873,663 people, have “suffered major mental harm” from coronavirus responses.
Just Facts researchers then compiled studies attempting to determine the deadliness of stress and anxiety, which they pointed out, is very difficult to do.
One study, from the Journal of the American Medical Association Psychiatry, analyzed the death rates of more than 1 million young Swedish males who underwent a mandatory military draft physical. Researchers believe this specific study is especially relevant to today’s pandemic because “it involves nearly all the healthy young men of a nation and excludes those with ‘severe’ mental or physical disorders because they were excused from the exam.” The study found that young men diagnosed with neurotic and adjustment disorders were 76% more likely to die in an average follow up period of 22.6 years.
After reviewing the results of all the different studies, researchers concluded that the smallest risk of increased death was 20%, with a margin of error from 13% to 27%. The lower end of 13% translates to an average of about 1.3 years of lost life per person.
“Those who suffer serious mental repercussions from responses to Covid-19 will lose an average of more than a year of life,” the study reads. “Therefore, the figure of 1.3 years of lost life is a bare minimum and forms the second key basis of this study. This varies widely by person and could be, 50 years or more for young people who commit suicide, one month or less for elderly persons who have cardiac events triggered by fear or loneliness, two years for the middle-aged people whose blood pressure begins spiking earlier in life than it would have in the absence of Covid-19-related stress.”
The study then looked at lockdowns in an effort to determine the number of lives saved by those measures, and the researchers looked at data from Scandinavia.
“Applying the Sweden/Finland death rate ratio of 6.4 to the United States, the maximum number of Americans who could have been saved by past and current lockdowns is 616,590,” the study concluded. “This figure is based on the most pessimistic projection of 114,228 deaths in the U.S. through August 4th by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. It is calculated by multiplying 114,228 deaths by 6.4 and then subtracting the 114,228 deaths that occur regardless of the lockdown.”
The study pointed out that the 616,590 is likely at the high end for a variety of reasons, including using a worst-case projection for the death toll and the assumption Sweden’s death rate doesn’t decline relative to its neighbors.
Finally, the study compares the projected lives lost and lives saved and determines “the anxiety from reactions to Covid-19— such as business shutdowns, stay-at-home orders, media exaggerations, and legitimate concerns about the virus — will extinguish at least seven times more years of life than can possibly be saved by the lockdowns.”
The researchers on the study say that while well documented, it is not so well known that mental health diseases attack the body and not just the mind, which often causes irreversible damage.
“Policymakers are getting a lot of advice on the narrow area of infectious diseases. They are not properly advised on ‘whole health’ matters,” Dr. Andrew Glen, professor emeritus of operations research at the United States Military Academy and co-author of the study, told Washington Examiner.
“Some people consider this a crisis of ‘health vs. economy.’ That is not correct — it is ‘health vs. health,’ with the economy suffering collateral damage,” Glen said, adding, “By choosing to ‘lockdown,’ policymakers are choosing the greater of two evils, not the lesser.”
