the problem is with your word "preventable"

what you mean by "preventable" is "at a cost that we don't have a way to quantify", hence will call that cost "inconvenience" and only focus on what we have "prevented"

all these measures that we take will kill many times more people than the disease. It is just the new deaths and damage are a diffuse costs whereas the benefits are concentrated and visible.

> all these measures that we take will kill many times more people than the disease.

I have seen this claim repeatedly, but always without numbers.

I completely agree that the measures have economic consequences, and the economic consequences will cost lives. But how do you know that the number is greater than the fraction of population killed by the coronavirus?

For example, the coronavirus in Sweden killed 0.05% of the population. Also, at least 0.7% got sick, with various consequences. Could you estimate what fraction of their population have other countries killed by the lockdowns? Ten percent? One percent? Zero point one percent?

> But how do you know that the number is greater than the fraction of population killed by the coronavirus?

You can measure it. For example you can look at excess mortality in the UK and then look at what fraction of that excess mortality is directly attributed to COVID.

Lots of people are doing this kind of data analysis on twitter.

Of course the guesswork comes in when you try to imagine how people would have acted without a lockdown.

Without lockdown would people still have gone for non-essential medical checkups for example?

I haven't looked at data from other countries yet. In Slovakia, the total mortality this year is lower than in the comparable period during previous years. I haven't investigated it, but my guess is fewer car accidents, and fewer people dying from the usual contagious diseases.

Of course it is possible that some deaths will come later, such as people who missed their medical checkups, have a condition that could have been cured a few months ago but is fatal now, and are still alive at the moment. I don't really think this is a large part of population.

I also suspect that if you do the simple calculation "excess mortality minus confirmed COVID deaths", this will be an overestimate, because many COVID deaths are misclassified as something else, e.g. pneumonia. And all those misclassified excess deaths would then appear as "victims of lockdown".

> I also suspect that if you do the simple calculation "excess mortality minus confirmed COVID deaths", this will be an overestimate, because many COVID deaths are misclassified as something else, e.g. pneumonia.

I think it depends on the country - a lot of countries are labelling any deaths with COVID symptoms as COVID (even though the symptoms are common to other illnesses like the flu).

In these countries it will likely be an overestimate.

> In Slovakia, the total mortality this year is lower than in the comparable period during previous years.

Yes, COVID has been fairly benign in a lot of countries and a massive killer of the old in others.

It's hard to deny that that a hard lockdown similar to the Chinese or the Italian one would have spared some of those lives, but it would have come with other costs (which, as you point, also cost lives).

So the "preventable" is speculative as well, nobody knows what would have happened with a lockdown , but there is an indication: the neighbouring Denmark was having a very fast spread of the disease until they imposed lockdown (which was a political decision) and they have had -until now- a much lower death toll per inhabitant.

But both approaches are reasonable IMHO. The Swedish strategy is based on pessimistic assumptions: we cannot stop the disease and the vaccine will be available late, if ever, therefore let's try to live with it and limit the damage. Herd immunity will eventually stop it. The Danish approach is more optimistic: let's block this now, whatever it costs, and hope that some cure (or a vaccine) comes before the disease starts spreading again.

Which approach will make less victims in the long run? We'll see, but both are bets.