Tom Woods’ newsletter quotes an important study titled “Estimated impact of the 2020 economic downturn on under-5 mortality for 129 countries“:
Between 1990 and 2019, there has been a sustained trend of decline in global poverty and infant mortality in LMICs [Low and Middle Income Countries]. However, as hypothesized above, COVID-19 related economic downturns of 2020 are likely to reverse these positive trends…
We estimate that the economic downturns of 2020 significantly increased loss of life among children younger than five years old in LMICs. Many of the countries in this analysis have relatively young populations with tenuous access to stable housing, clean water, food, and primary care. The health of these children is highly susceptible to reductions in the economic well-being of their families. Children in these lower income countries are also subject to a high rate of exposure to other infectious diseases, besides COVID-19, which makes them more susceptible when the economy reduces their access to nutrition, housing, water, sanitation, and parental care. Disruptions to primary health care service supply and demand will compound these threats, and thus may be a likely driver of increased mortality in these settings.
He adds:
According to the study, assuming a conservative scenario of a five percent reduction in GDP per capita, the additional number of under-5 deaths (in other words, over and above the number of deaths that would have occurred under normal conditions) is 282,996. In the scenarios of 10 or 15 percent reductions in GDP per capita, the excess loss of life among children under age five is 585,802 and 911,026, respectively.
You have surely heard some people in our camp call for hearings, trials, imprisonments, and maybe some of you have thought those demands are over the top.
Look at those numbers again, and then consider what the perpetrators of this catastrophe deserve.