> lostapathy: If said "down economy" led to a long-term depression or a year or two of lost crops due to any number of possible disruptions, we could easily see more death (both directly and due to social unrest, suicide, etc).
History doesn't bear this out. The Great Depression resulted in an uptick in suicide, yes, but a decline in practically every other cause of mortality.
> yters: Yes, I do think we could have a more reasonable approach that will result in less aggregate deaths than our current approach.
You could look at any societal attempt to deal with a large scale threat and say "well that could've been done better", but as I said in my other comment, perfection takes time, and, with time of the essence, I think we were smart to move forward with an imperfect but obviously impactful solution rather than burn time and lives trying to find some mythical perfect balance.
History doesn't bear this out. The Great Depression resulted in an uptick in suicide, yes, but a decline in practically every other cause of mortality.
https://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17290.full
> yters: Yes, I do think we could have a more reasonable approach that will result in less aggregate deaths than our current approach.
You could look at any societal attempt to deal with a large scale threat and say "well that could've been done better", but as I said in my other comment, perfection takes time, and, with time of the essence, I think we were smart to move forward with an imperfect but obviously impactful solution rather than burn time and lives trying to find some mythical perfect balance.