M.B. Pell and Benjamin Lesser, Researchers warn the COVID-19 lockdown will take its own toll on health
By M.B. PELL and BENJAMIN LESSER
As governments race to stem the
spread of coronavirus through an unprecedented closing of schools,
businesses and travel, some specialists fear the long term public health
impacts of a depressed economy and shuttered society.
It’s the most dramatic
government intervention into our lives since World War II. To fight the
coronavirus outbreak, governments across the globe have closed schools,
travel and businesses big and small. Many observers have fretted about
the economic costs of throwing millions of people out of work and
millions of students out of school.
Now, three weeks after
the United States and other countries took sweeping suppression steps
that
could last months or more, some public health specialists are
exploring a different consequence of the mass shutdown: the thousands of
deaths likely to arise unrelated to the disease itself.
The longer the
suppression lasts, history shows, the worse such outcomes will be. A
surge of unemployment in 1982 cut the life spans of Americans by a
collective two to three million years, researchers found.
During the last recession, from 2007-2009, the bleak job market helped
spike suicide rates in the United States and Europe, claiming the lives
of 10,000 more people than prior to the downturn. This time, such
effects could be even deeper in the weeks, months and years ahead if, as
many business and political leaders are warning, the economy crashes
and unemployment skyrockets to historic levels.
Real Deal Reports (12 May 2020) with Dean Ryan in LA and Mike Bara in Seattle.
Already, there are
reports that isolation measures are triggering more domestic violence in
some areas. Prolonged school closings are preventing special needs
children from receiving treatment and could presage a rise in dropouts
and delinquency. Public health centers will lose funding, causing a
decline in their services and the health of their communities. A surge
in unemployment to 20% – a forecast now common in Western economies –
could cause an additional 20,000 suicides in Europe and the United
States among those out of work or entering a near-empty job market.
None of this is to
downplay the chilling death toll COVID-19 threatens, or to suggest
governments shouldn’t aggressively respond to the crisis.
“Depressions are deadly for people, poor people especially.”Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford University health policy researcher
A recent report by
researchers from Imperial College London helped set the global lockdown
in motion, contending that coronavirus could kill 2 million Americans
and 500,000 people in Great Britain unless governments rapidly deployed
severe social distancing measures. To truly work, the report said, the
suppression effort would need to last, perhaps in an on-again, off-again
fashion, for up to 18 months.
In the United States, the
White House this week said the final toll could rise to 240,000 dead.
States have responded to the dire warnings, and the escalating number of
cases revealed each day, by extending stay-at-home shutdowns.
The medical battle
against COVID-19 is developing so rapidly that no one knows how it will
play out or what the final casualty count will be. But researchers say
history shows that responses to a deep and long economic shock, coupled
with social distancing, will trigger health impacts of their own, over
the short, mid and long term.
Here is a look at some.
Domestic Violence
Trapped at home with
their abusers, some domestic violence victims are already experiencing
more frequent and extreme violence, said Katie Ray-Jones, the chief
executive officer of the National Domestic Violence Hotline.
Domestic violence
programs across the country have cited increases in calls for help, news
accounts reported – from Cincinnati to Nashville, Portland, Salt Lake
City and statewide in Virginia and Arizona. The YWCA of Northern New
Jersey, in another example, told Reuters its domestic violence calls
have risen up to 24%.
“There are special
populations that are going to have impacts that go way beyond COVID-19,”
said Ray-Jones, citing domestic violence victims as one.
Vulnerable Students
Students, parents and
teachers all face challenges adjusting to remote learning, as schools
nationwide have been closed and online learning has begun.
Some experts are
concerned that students at home, especially those living in unstable
environments or poverty, will miss more assignments. High school
students who miss at least three days a month are seven times more
likely to drop out before graduating and, as a result, live nine years
less than their peers, according to a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report.
Among the most
vulnerable: the more than 6 million special education students across
the United States. Without rigorous schooling and therapy, these
students face a lifetime of challenges.
Special needs students
“benefit the most from highly structured and customized special
education,” said Sharon Vaughn, executive director of the The Meadows
Center for Preventing Educational Risk at the University of Texas. “This
means that they are the group that are most likely to be significantly
impacted by not attending school both in the short and long term.”
In New Jersey, Matawan’s
Megan Gutierrez has been overwhelmed with teaching and therapy duties
for her two nonverbal autistic sons, eight and 10. She’s worried the
boys, who normally work with a team of therapists and teachers, will
regress. “For me, keeping those communications skills is huge, because
if they don’t, that can lead to behavioral issues where they get
frustrated because they can’t communicate,” Gutierrez said.
Soaring Suicides
In Europe and the United States, suicide rates rise about 1% for
every one percentage point increase in unemployment, according to
research published by lead author Aaron Reeves from Oxford University.
During the last recession, when the unemployment in the United States
peaked at 10%, the suicide rate jumped, resulting in 4,750 more deaths.
If the unemployment rate increases to 20%, the toll could well rise.
“Sadly, I think there is
a good chance we could see twice as many suicides over the next 24
months than we saw during the early part of the last recession,” Reeves
told Reuters. That would be about 20,000 additional dead by suicide in
the United States and Europe.
10,000
Number of additional suicides in the U.S. and Europe after the last recession
Less than three weeks
after extreme suppression measures began in the United States,
unemployment claims rose by nearly 10 million. Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin warned the rate could reach 20% and Federal Reserve economists
predicted as high as 32%. Europe faces similarly dire forecasts.
Some researchers caution
that suicide rates might not spike so high. The conventional wisdom is
that more people will kill themselves amid skyrocketing unemployment,
but communities could rally around a national effort to defeat COVID-19
and the rates may not rise, said Anne Case, who researches health
economics at Princeton University. “Suicide is hard to predict even in
the absence of a crisis of Biblical proportions,” Case said.
This week, the Air Force
Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, relaxed its strict social
isolation policies after the apparent suicides of two cadet seniors in
late March, The Gazette, a Colorado Springs newspaper, reported. While
juniors, sophomores and freshmen had been sent home, the college seniors
were kept isolated in dorms, and some had complained of a prison-like
setting. Now, the seniors will be able to leave campus for drive-thru
food and congregate in small groups per state guidelines.
Public Health Crippled
Local health departments
run programs that treat chronic diseases such as diabetes. They also
help prevent childhood lead poisoning and stem the spread of the flu,
tuberculosis and rabies. A severe loss of property and sales tax revenue
following a wave of business failures will likely cripple these health
departments, said Adriane Casalotti, chief of government affairs with
the National Association of County and City Health Officials, a
nonprofit focused on public health.
After the 2008 recession, local health departments in the U.S. lost 23,000 positions as
more than half experienced budget cuts. While it’s become popular to
warn against placing economic concerns over health, Casalotti said that,
on the front lines of public health, the two are inexorably linked.
“What are you going to do when you have no tax base to pull from?” she
asked.
Carol Moehrle, director
of a public health department that serves five counties in northern
Idaho, said her office lost about 40 of its 90 employees amid the last
recession. The department had to cut a family planning program that
provided birth control to women below the poverty line and a program
that tested for and treated sexually transmitted diseases. She worries a
depression will cause more harm.
“I honestly don’t think we could be much leaner and still be viable, which is a scary thing to think about,” Moehrle said.
Job-loss Mortality
Rises in unemployment
during large recessions can set in motion a domino effect of reduced
income, additional stress and unhealthy lifestyles. Those setbacks in
income and health often mean people die earlier, said Till von Wachter, a
University of California Los Angeles professor who researches the
impact of job loss. Von Wachter said his research of past surges in
unemployment suggests displaced workers could lose, on average, a year
and a half of lifespan. If the jobless rate rises to 20%, this could
translate into 48 million years of lost human life.
Von Wachter cites
measures he believes could mitigate the effects of unemployment. The
Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act approved by the White
House last week includes emergency loans to businesses and a short-time
compensation program that could encourage employers to keep employees
on the payroll.
Young People Suffer
Young adults entering the job market during the coronavirus suppression may pay an especially high price over the long term.
First-time job hunters seeking work during periods of high unemployment live shorter and unhealthier lives, research shows.
An extended freeze of the economy could shorten the lifespan of 6.4
million Americans entering the job market by an average of about two
years, said Hannes Schwandt, a health economics researcher at
Northwestern University, who conducted the study with von Wachter. This
would be 12.8 million years of life lost.
Thousands of college
graduates will enter a job market at a time global business is frozen.
Jason Gustave, a senior at William Paterson University in New Jersey who
will be the first in his family to graduate from college, had a job in
physical therapy lined up. Now his licensure exam is postponed and the
earliest he could start work is September.
“It all depends on where the economy goes,” he said. “Is there a position still available?”
In the weeks ahead, a
clearer picture of the disease’s devastation will come into focus, and
governments and health specialists will base their fatality estimates on
a stronger factual grounding.
As they do, some public
health experts say, the government should weigh the costs of the
suppression measures taken and consider recalibrating, if necessary.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya,
who researches health policy at Stanford University, said he worries
governments worldwide have not yet fully considered the long term health
impacts of the impending economic calamity. The coronavirus can kill,
he said, but a global depression will, as well. Bhattacharya is among
those urging government leaders to carefully consider the complete
shutdown of businesses and schools.
“Depressions are deadly for people, poor people especially,” he said.
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