Every policy decision has a cost. Sometimes they’re evident and easy to account for, a budget line in a ledger. It’s more difficult when the costs are human, when the line of causality between a choice — or lack thereof — and fallout becomes fuzzy. And when we’re making decisions in a crisis, a time of uncertainty and higher stakes, it can be tempting to set aside the less obvious costs entirely.
More than 280,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, a tragic toll. Had lockdowns not been instituted in many parts of the country earlier this year, the death toll might be higher; had they been instituted more aggressively, more broadly, that toll might be lower. But the lockdowns and stay-at-home orders had a human cost aside from their effects on virus transmission, as Drew Holden so vividly illustrates in his Op-Ed today. This cost is more indirect, and thus harder to trace, but it is no less real. It is visible in rates of anxiety and depression, in overdoses and domestic violence. And, as Drew notes, we can expect that there will be even more long-term health effects from the lockdowns.
This is an important accounting, and not just as a matter of retrospect. The virus is surging again all over the country. State and local governments have to decide whether their responses will include new lockdowns, and if they do, how broad those new lockdowns will be. Renewed lockdowns still may be the right choice, but to make that choice wisely and responsibly, we have to understand their full cost. We have a responsibility to those who will bear the burden of our decisions. |
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