The Equivalent Deaths Debate -- Part Two

In the first installment (May 23), I tried to define the nature of the equivalent deaths or equi-misery debate. Then I discussed how proponents of early re-opening are trying to assign a misery heft to the consequences of delaying a return to "normal" economic life.

These consequences are usually listed as increased suicides, depression, drug use, and domestic violence. The early opening supporters fail, however, to assign any kind of misery heft to the tens of thousands of additional lives lost to the virus because of early opening. They ignore the "spin-off" miseries of the added deaths, as if those deaths stood alone and had no impact on others. At its core, this is an asymmetrical and dishonest argument.

Today, I'd like to discuss some additional problems with the equi-misery argument for early opening. The first has to do with a basic structural issue that renders the argument virtually impossible to prove.

Early re-opening supporters attempt to balance additional lives lost to COVID-19 with a counter-tally of suicides prevented and depression/drug use/domestic violence averted by "getting people back to work" quickly. It is impossible, however, to attribute increases in suicides, depression, drug use, and domestic violence solely or even primarily to something called "economic hardship due to delayed re-opening." The reason you cannot do this is because the economic hardship is taking place during an actual, life-threatening pandemic. The pandemic creates an immersive cultural and psychological context in which the additional economic hardship is occurring.

You simply cannot assign suicides, depression, drug use, and domestic violence solely or primarily to economic hardship because all of the aforementioned misery indices may be more the result of an existential disease threat than any economic factors. It appears impossible to tease out consequences of economic hardship from the consequences of disease stress hardship. Any data from 1918 would face similar difficulties and would not be applicable anyway, given the vast cultural and social psychological differences between the 1918 and 2020 milieus.

Economic hardship does indeed correlate with increased suicides, depression, drug use, and domestic violence. However, so too does an ongoing, months-long omnipresent viral threat that kills people. There is no way to separate one or the other out of the real-world equation, and therefore no way to assign cause-and-effect to one rather than the other. Americans are experiencing the pandemic and economic hardship simultaneously. Labeling economic hardship as the primary cause for increases in suicides, depression, drug use, and domestic violence is a political assignation, not a scientific or even necessarily a logical one.


Libertarian Angles

The equi-misery argument for early re-opening has some libertarian underpinnings. Eventually, these libertarian underpinnings come into self-conflict.

For example, early re-openers emphasize a "right to work," regardless of lack of COVID-19 testing and the resulting inability to ascertain who is asymptomatically contagious. Similarly, themes of libertarianism are invoked to provide support for protest rallies which feature few masks and little social distancing. Libertarianism is used to argue for the rights of Kentucky shopkeepers and Texas bar owners to ban people who are wearing masks, despite overwhelming evidence that masks protect public health. "My body, my choice," is now a libertarian battle cry for people who do not want mask-wearing or social distancing laws. In all of these examples, the historical libertarian ideal is hailed as on the side of early re-opening and personal choice.

Curiously, however, when the equi-misery proponents try to balance additional lives lost to the virus with other events, libertarian perspectives are completely abandoned. Suicides, depression, drug use, and domestic violence have historically been considered, from a libertarian perspective, to contain significant elements of self-choice. The equi-misery arguers ignore these self-choice components when they make their case for early re-opening. Economic hardship becomes some irresistible force that whitewashes personal choice from the equation. Suicides, depression, drug use, and domestic violence become forces of nature not amenable to personal or societal intervention.

I'm not trying to channel Thomas Szasz here. I'm simply pointing out the convenient parlor trick of relying on libertarian views to anchor Part A of an argument while abandoning these same views (and in fact arguing against them) in Part B. This is what early re-opening supporters are doing.


Conclusion

Using the equi-misery argument to justify tens of thousands of additional lives lost to COVID-19 is logically flawed, impossible to clearly demonstrate in any provable way, and simply a political point of view clothed with some self-contradicting themes. Equi-misery is an excuse to impose a non-scientific pandemic strategy on the American public instead of a scientific one. Viewing the U.S. as an economy rather than a society, its supporters attempt to elevate untethered economic values over intricately connected familial, cultural, and religious values.


Bob Dietz
May 30, 2020