PERFIL – It is clear that this quarantine generates significant benefits, by facilitating social isolation. However, it also generates costs.
Every decision made by a government generates benefits as well as costs. Of course, it is justified when the benefits outweigh the costs.
It is clear that in the face of the humanitarian tragedy that we are experiencing, quarantine is a measure that generates notable benefits, by facilitating social isolation.
The evidence provided by the fact that it has been carried out in most of the countries of the globe is sufficient to affirm this. Many lives have been saved thanks to it. However, quarantine also generates costs. It is impossible to imagine a policy that does not generate them. What are the costs in this case? For whom this writes, the cost debacle is not the economic debacle, simply because if we measure the benefits in terms of human lives, it is correct to quantify the costs in the same unit of measure.
Bolsonaro against an almighty virus
For example, on May 29, an interesting note published on BBC.com warned that the majority of deaths caused by COVID-19 will not be due to the virus itself, but due to the policies carried out to deal with it. As an example: “The Royal College of Psychiatrists reports a six-fold increase in suicide attempts by the elderly in the UK due to depression and anxiety caused by social isolation.”
I ask myself, how many lives will be lost due to the extension that quarantine is reaching in our country, and the fact that the vast majority of medical resources are focused on the pandemic and the prevention of the health catastrophe that would represent the collapse of the system, as Italy has experienced, without going any further?
The quarantine of vulnerable children and adolescents
How many scheduled operations are being delayed? How many tumors are not being detected in time, because the regularity of medical check-ups has been practically suspended? How many adequately treatable heart diseases will go unnoticed with fatal consequences? How many children have stopped coming to their pediatrician regularly, for mothers’ fear of taking a risk that they believe is unwarranted, given that their children appear to be healthy? How many of them are not and their life is at risk, or the quality of life they will have in their adulthood? How many of our elders, preserved, and rightly so, from contagion in their homes, are not receiving medical attention that your age requires, with what your life expectancy decreases? How many patients are not taking their medicines to avoid going to a medical center to request prescriptions and lack the connectivity or knowledge to request them online? How many people, who carry a depressive picture, will have to commit suicide due to the effect of the feeling of loneliness caused by the quarantine?
Coronavirus and quarantine, the danger of drinking alcohol to combat stress
The list of questions is endless, but your answer may lead us to conclude that, even without taking into account the effects of the economic debacle, the remedy could be worse than the disease. I think it is necessary to evaluate it.
(Source www.perfil.com).
