The number that Covid-19 deaths are not being weighed against, and is harder to immediately quantify, is the number of lives being lost to suicide, opioid addiction, domestic violence and so on and so forth as people are financially ruined from the shutdown. There are a lot of us cruising along semi normally through this, but many, many people are being devastated.

If that hat number is even a tenth of a percent of the population then it dwarfs the Covid deaths by about a factor of 5. Opening things up will increase the former and decrease the latter. The idea is to have them meet at the L/Dmax point for minimum death moving forward. And that point isn’t to continue to shelter in place.

The coming freak outs of Covid cases and deaths on the rise as people start mixing again is to be expected. But only because a baseline cost benefit analysis with which to measure those deaths against isn’t being presented to the populace for consideration. One, because it’s not easy to quantify, and two, because sensationalism sells.

Yes, Covid deaths have exceeded Vietnam war deaths. If the death rate caused by the financial stresses of the shutdown is even one tenth of one percent of the population then we are rapidly approaching WW2 death tolls, and if it’s five hundredths of one percent then it’s still nearly three times the Corona virus lives lost.

Hence, it’s time to opens things up in a reasonable phased approach with the goal of having everything running full tilt again by perhaps late summer or early fall while the most at risk shelter as best they can until we have more tools available to help those suffering the worst effects of the infection.