Originally Posted by Excargodog

I would have used the same tactics that have ALWAYS been used in previous epidemics. THIS case is the outlier. This has not been done before. And those issues were ALWAYS PRESENT with every previous epidemic. We listened to the Chicken Littles of the world and will pay a terrible price for the shutdown, and I don’t just mean in dollars.

in thevUS alone, three million people a year are diagnosed with a serious cancer. Ultimately we cure (or at least put in remission long enough the patient dies of something else) two-thirds of those people. But for three months nobody was doing Pap smears, mammograms, colonoscopies, and other tests to detect those cancers early, so they will be detected later, when the cancer is more advanced, the surgery/chemotherapy/radiation therapy will be more extreme, and the odds of cure less.

Same sort of thing applies across the board. Stop routine medical diagnosis and care, the cardiovascular disease gets worse, the renal disease gets worse, diabetes... etc. let alone increases in mental illness, child abuse, suicide, domestic violence, etc.

you can’t just count one side of 5he equation, you gotta count both sides.