Thread by @bansisharma

1. WSJ: The Lockdown Reckoning
Today brings still more evidence of what any reasonable person should have guessed in early March 2020. Imposing wrenching changes on a society without calm consideration of costs and benefits is bound to end in catastrophe.

2. Unfortunately since 2020 not many reasonable people have been running America’s public health bureaucracies. And so the coronavirus panic led to fear-inducing measures targeting just one of the many threats to human health, with hardly a thought for the collateral damage.

3. The powers that be also gave little thought to the unlikelihood that business lockdowns and school closures would somehow manage to stop the virus. (They didn’t.)

4. Accounting for the costs of turning American society upside down continues today. Along comes a series of reports from companies that have been paying for some of the collateral damage.

5. U.S. life insurers, as expected, made a large number of Covid-19 death-benefit payouts last year. More surprisingly, many saw a jump in other death claims, too.

6. Industry executives and actuaries believe many of these other fatalities are tied to delays in medical care as a result of lockdowns in 2020, and then, later, people’s fears of seeking out treatment and trouble lining up appointments.

7. Some insurers see continued high levels of these deaths for some time, even if Covid-19 deaths decline this year.

The health problems resulting from locking down society and terrorizing citizens into avoiding non-Covid care might last even longer than Covid?

The End