Thread by @DrewHolden360

Quick 🧵.

I think the idea that “lockdowns saved lives” doesn’t make sense in pretty straightforward ways that we don’t seem to be talking about enough.

(1/12)

The most prominent US study (story on it linked below) suggests that lockdowns helped avoid 60 million coronavirus cases. Otherwise, we’d have about triple the number of confirmed cases we have now.

Let’s use that as a starting point.

google.com/amp/s/www.wash…

(2/12)

To make things simple and round, let’s assume that 3x cases = 3x deaths. This overstates the current mortality rate of COVID (esp accounting for true caseloads vs. positive tests) but accounts for some inexact pressure on hospitals and other systems.

(3/12)

Under this really optimistic assessment, lockdowns can be credited with saving roughly 1 million lives in the US.

That’s a lot of people who are here today who wouldn’t be otherwise.

But let’s factor in one other factor: increased obesity.

(4/12)

The number of people who die as a result of obesity is hard to nail down. Estimates range from 100k-525k. Let’s use the high end for example’s sake.

A recent-ish study found that, every year, ~1 in 5 US deaths (so 513k) are associated w/obesity. nbcnews.com/healthmain/hea…

(5/12)

That’s with a current US obesity rate of 42%.

A new study estimates that people, on average, gained about 2 lbs/month during the pandemic. Let’s say, for the sake of simple numbers, that this bumps the obesity rate to 52%, up 10%.

google.com/amp/s/www.nyti…

(6/12)

This would be about a 25% increase - so a big gain - but for context, if one third of the presently overweight (but not obese) population gained enough weight to become obese, that would give us a rate of 52%. healthline.com/health/obesity…

(7/12)

Let’s say that this 10% increase translates 1:1 to the death rate from obesity we’ve outlined earlier.

That would mean ~51,307 more deaths a year if present rates and other conditions hold.

(8/12)

That would mean that, in less than 20 years, the number of lockdown-created obesity deaths would entirely wipe out the lives saved by the lockdown under the rosiest estimates.

(9/12)

This is without accounting for all the other health consequences - especially related to mental health - the lockdown exacerbated. I’ve written more about those here: google.com/amp/s/www.nyti…

(10/12)

And, mind you, the entire premise that lives were indeed saved in the first is disputed. This piece from WSJ makes a pretty compelling case that the evidence just isn’t there. google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.…

(11/12)

These are all back-of-the-napkin calculations. The real world is messier and some of these assumptions may be unreasonable. But hopefully it outlines why, when we talk about the lockdown, we’ve absolutely gotta look at the consequences beyond just the economic.

(12/12)