McDonald Laurier Institute - Rethinking Lockdowns
“…Public health leaders are medical experts and are necessary advisors in for- mulating a response to the pandemic. However, their expertise is not suffi- cient to make policy decisions. There are trade-offs to any decision made, and preventing COVID-19 cases, deaths, and overwhelmed hospital capacity are not the only factors to consider. Unfortunately, the response perspective of controlling a single disease has had devastating, often unequally distributed, collateral effects…”
“…In high-income countries other collateral damage from lockdowns is occur- ring. Fear of attending hospitals resulted in 50 percent declines in visits for heart attacks and strokes, meaning missed opportunity for time-critical treat- ments. ‘Non-urgent’ surgery and cancer diagnosis/treatment were delayed, with backlogs that will take years of catch-up and untold effects on prognoses. Of excess mortality during the pandemic, 20-50 percent has not been due to COVID-19 (see Kontis et al. 2020; Docherty et all 2020; and Postill et al 2020); much of that excess is likely attributable to these collateral effects. An unexplained increase in deaths of people with dementia in the US and UK also likely arose from deterioration due to loneliness. Over time, suicide, de- pression, alcohol use disorder, childhood trauma due to domestic violence, changes in marital status, and social isolation are projected to cause millions of years of life lost in Canada alone.”
“…Given the age distribution of deaths from COVID-19, each death has cost the loss of about 5 QALY; thus, lockdowns might save up to 25.12 million QALY (see Table 1).”
“….A minimum cost calculation of the recession’s effect on reducing government spending on the determinants of population wellbe- ing and lifespan is this: (at least US$50 trillion GDP loss globally) X (around 40 percent of GDP from government expenditures) ÷ (less than US$80,000/QALY) is equal to or greater than 250 million QALY lost in the years to come. Already the cost-benefit balance comes out about 10 times against lockdowns (see Table 1).
A similar rough calculation for Canada puts the cost-benefit balance at about 17 times against lockdowns.”