Excess Deaths in 2020
I'm curious if there's a good way to breakdown how much is caused by COVID vs., say, caused by the lockdown (i.e. delayed elective medical procedures, suicides, etc.). For example the US suicide rate declined from 2018 to 2019, but went back up in 2020. Naively assuming that all of the increase was due to the effects of the lockdowns would attribute ~2,880 suicides to them (or more if in a counterfactual world the suicide rate was going to continue declining if there hadn't been a lockdown). Obviously the real causes of these suicides would be difficult to impossible to determine with certainty, making this a difficult path to explore.<p>In the UK a study predicts a 7.9-9.6% increase in breast cancer deaths within 5 years of diagnosis due to diagnostic delays caused by COVID. For other cancers their estimates vary, i.e. 15.3%-16.6% for colorectal, 4.8%-5.3% for lung, etc. thelancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(20)30388-0/fulltext<p>Basically I guess what I'm really trying to get at is that while COVID is certainly a terrible disease, there seems to have been little to no cost-benefit analysis performed by policy makers regarding the lockdowns and other attempts to combat it.