1000s of people will likely die due to the primary and secondary effects of the lockdown (suicides, delayed health care, etc.). There's also no guarantee that "locking down" will actually prevent any deaths - it may just be delaying them until the point where things start to open back up (because I think we can all agree that does have to happen at some point someday). Everyone is hoping for treatment or a vaccine or really good testing/tracing to make a difference, but I'm not sure any of those things are guaranteed. We may just be delaying the inevitable.
All decisions at this point have significant downsides. There is no clearly correct answer. Politicians are trying to balance those concerns, and they're trying to do so with extremely limited data and awful models (due to the bad data - GIGO). I don't honestly think anyone knows what will really happen with either the virus OR the economy. It's clear they're just guessing and that's really terrifying.
Losing life and livelihood: a systematic review and meta-analysis of unemployment and all-cause mortality [1]
> Unemployed persons were significantly more likely to die than those in a comparator group; the hazard ratio adjusted for age and other covariates was 1.63, showing that unemployment is associated with a 63% higher risk of mortality. The average effect was higher for men than women with an increased risk of 78% compared to 37%, respectively. Unemployed people in their early or mid careers faced an increased risk of 73% and 77%, compared to 25% for those in their late careers. The risk of death was over 70% in the first ten years of follow-up but fell to 42% after that, although the trend was not significant in the final meta-regression model.
All decisions at this point have significant downsides. There is no clearly correct answer. Politicians are trying to balance those concerns, and they're trying to do so with extremely limited data and awful models (due to the bad data - GIGO). I don't honestly think anyone knows what will really happen with either the virus OR the economy. It's clear they're just guessing and that's really terrifying.