Ask HN: Anyone compared expected deaths by Covid Vs those by recession?

3 points by starlord 6 years ago | 1 comment

I am sorry to sound callous, but reading all the news around I got quite concerned on the economic consequences of the recession and measures being taken.

So I was trying to determine how many people will be saved by Covid with the steep measures taken vs how many people might be pushed to death due to downstream economic consequences...

Quick search on google scholar didn't give me too many leads on clear metrics on change of death rate with recession or unemployment. Some studies even said last recession lowered death rate in Europe.

Anyone who deals with such stats here have any insights?

dmos62 6 years ago |

Something to consider is that dying of pneumonia and dying indirectly of economic hardship are very different experiences. At some point we have to ask ourselves the awkward question of how many pneumonia deaths equal how many hardship deaths.

Another point could be that there are countermeasures to recession-related human suffering as well. Economy is obviously fragile, but maybe we could orient towards becoming more resilient to its inevitable crashes, instead of going to austere ends to not disturb it?