In saving Covid lives how many other deaths are okay?

Ananish Chaudhuri

A recent column in the New Zealand Herald asks: How many Covid deaths are acceptable?

The question is rhetorical because the author’s implication is that answer is zero. But what the author is effectively arguing is that we will not accept a single Covid death regardless of how many other deaths we encounter elsewhere.

My question is: How many other deaths are okay? Why are the Covid lives so much more precious than other lives?

It is surprising that the proponents of lockdowns have remained steadfastly resolute in their support even as the evidence regarding the massive collateral damage has mounted steadily.

We know now that lockdowns may have saved Covid lives but only at the expense of taking lives elsewhere and the trade-off is not in favour of the arguments supporting lockdowns.

A recent study[1] looks at twenty-four European countries and compares the overall mortality for the first half of 2020. Those countries that imposed more stringent lockdowns (similar to the one imposed by New Zealand) reported much higher rates of mortality compared to those that implemented less stringent social distancing.

This same study reports that two countries, Belgium and the UK, that imposed stringent lockdowns experienced many more deaths in the first half of 2020 than during the same time-frame averaged over the previous three years.

It is also the case that imposing hard lockdowns early does not save countries from having to impose further lockdowns (and incur the concomitant losses) down the road. If there was any doubt regarding this, then the recent outbreaks in Australia have set them to rest.

This may be thought of as the direct impact of lockdowns; saving Covid-19 lives at the expense of lives from a multitude of other diseases and causes, including self-harm.

But the indirect effects are equally sobering.

Is a strong health response also the best economic response? John Gibson of Waikato University looks at data for 32 OECD countries and finds a strong negative relationship between stringency of lockdowns and growth rates. Countries that imposed harder lockdowns have experienced lower (and in many cases negative) growth rates.[2]

This drop in GDP has consequences for lives too.

For instance, recently the Herald reported that according to the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), “an estimated 18,000 children have been pushed into poverty since the first lockdown, with Māori and Pasifika bearing the brunt.” The CPAG argues that children did not get the attention needed from the Government through 2020.

According to a CPAG spokesperson: “This increase in child poverty of around 10 per cent comes at a time when property owners have seen their wealth rise at an accelerated rate. The Government avoided one massive health and economic crisis but it enabled another one — that of poverty, homelessness and inequality — to grow rapidly. Loss of income related to job loss was probably inevitable for many families; but loss of income to the point of inadequacy — or further inadequacy — was due to political decision-making.”

This matters crucially because there is a clear connection between loss in income and life expectancy. For New Zealand the relationship between income and life expectancy is stronger than many of our OECD peers. If and when incomes fall, our life expectancy falls too. Estimates suggest that a 10% drop in our GDP will result in an approximate 1.7% drop in life expectancy for all Kiwis.

New Zealand’s real GDP in 2020 was 5.2% lower than expected amounting to $14 billion of output not produced. Forecasting through to the end of 2023 this gap will grow to $36 billion in real terms. Gibson’s estimates suggest that given the relation between GDP growth and life expectancy, this projected drop in output will lower life expectancy for each Kiwi by around 8 months. This is equivalent to 2 million fewer life years or the equivalent of 45,350 deaths!

The actual drop in life expectancy may be higher based on the long-term fiscal projections released by Treasury recently, which cuts the forecast life expectancy growth by around two years compared to the forecast back in 2016.

This is a lot of lives lost; certainly orders of magnitudes higher than what we may have lost to Covid-19.

So my question is: how many deaths will it take before the lockdown proponents are willing to say enough is enough?

References:

[1] Bjørnskov, C. (2021). Did lockdowns work? An economist’s cross-country comparison. CESifo Economic Studies, 1–14. doi:10/1093/cesifo/ifab003.

[2] Gibson, J. (2020a). Government mandated lockdowns do not reduce Covid-19 deaths: Implications for evaluating the stringent New Zealand response. Forthcoming, New Zealand Economic Papers (In Press). doi:10.1080/00779954.2020.1844786. Gibson, J. (2021). Life expectancy reductions from New Zealand’s unbalanced Covid response [Poster]. New Zealand Association of Economists Annual Conference, Wellington, NZ. June 23, 2021.