Unlike most other European countries, Sweden is not increasing its sovereign debt load by 15+% of GDP to keep the citizenry afloat. That’ll feel a lot more important than Covid in 5 years.
I think this is likely a biased view. If you ask the families of the 300+k people who died from Covid-19 they probably won't consider the economic impact to be the most significant.
Thankfully, that's both not how democracy works - we don't ask a biased sample - and exactly how it works - we ask everyone what they think of the government's performance and they vote for or against.
When we all look back in 5 years, then 10, then 15, there will be different "obvious" conclusions drawn. Right now, anyone who sides with any action as correct should have a confidence level that is extremely small.
The more varied the responses, the more we learn as a species, and I am glad that not everywhere assumes they are NYC or Lombardy, and acts in varying ways so that in 5, 10, and 15 years the coming studies have different data points of comparison.
I agree with you, that was basically my point. At this point in time we don't know enough about how this will play out to make any claim about what was the more important aspect to consider: the effects on the economy or the effects on population-level health due to Covid-19.
I think it’s fair to say that both numbers represent a measure of different ways that the pandemic has caused pain and suffering, whether it’s in terms of lives or livelihoods impacted.
We obviously need to deal with both problems concurrently. There are a lot of actions that can be taken which can help one which doesn’t come at the expense of the other, so it’s not purely a either-or decision.
It would be wrong to turn a blind eye to either effect. The death toll is an immediate concern, but so is a functioning food supply chain, and indeed a healthy economy is critically important to everyone.
No having lived through an economic collapse or a hyper inflation event, for example, it may be hard to appreciate how difficult (and deadly) that situation can be.
People are worried about economies not for some abstract reasons.
Bad economies literally kill and have a potential to kill much more people than Covid-19.
From what I gather, the scale of current economic damage is seriously compared to the Great Depression in mainstream media[1][2].
Well, the Great Depression brought Nazi into power in Germany[3], WW2 followed and took lives of 70-85 million people[4] to say nothing of the post-war devastation.
Or look at Venezuela for an example of a bad economy in modern times, where "families buy rotten meat to eat"[5].
Also, if you ask families of people who will die because their cancer wasn't diagnosed in time, they will probably consider lockdowns too excessive[6].
I don't think anyone said worry about the economy was an abstract idea. It obviously has a very real effect on people and their health, it has been well studied. I was simply pointing out that what people will consider more significant in five years time (the effect of the pandemic itself or the subsequent harm to the economy due to the response) depends on who you ask. Furthermore, since we don't know the full extent of the pandemic or the ensuing economic impact it doesn't make sense to claim one way or the other right now.
Also, the Great Depression was one of many factors that led to the rise of the Nazis in Germany. The tensions that led to WW2 were brewing for before WW1 even started so don't try to claim that an economic depression caused all those deaths. There are far too many factors to make that claim.
"I was simply pointing out that what people will consider more significant in five years time"
Yes, I think I understand what you're saying.
My point is the harm to the economy directly translates to lives lost too. Bad economy leads to surge in violent crime, opiods addictions, gang violence, lost access to health care...
"... the Great Depression was one of many factors that led to the rise of the Nazis in Germany. The tensions that led to WW2 were brewing for before WW1 even started so don't try to claim that an economic depression caused all those deaths. There are far too many factors to make that claim."
It wasn't the only cause, sure. But it was a huge one, afaik. History isn't a hard science, of course, and I'm not a historian (not even an amateur historian) but this quote from Wikipedia doesn't strike me as particularly controversial:
"The unemployment rate reached nearly 30% in 1932, bolstering support for the Nazi (NSDAP) and Communist (KPD) parties, causing the collapse of the politically centrist Social Democratic Party... Large-scale military spending played a major role in the recovery."[1]
