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Remember how public health COLLAPSED after Soviet Union fell? I fear West will see same due to post-lockdown economic CATASTROPHE
from RT:
The self-inflicted damage we’ve done to our economies in the name of combating Covid-19 will kill far more people than the virus itself. The economic collapse that followed the communist bloc’s break-up caused millions of deaths.
There has never been a situation to compare with what we have been living through these past weeks and months. Never in the history of the world have entire countries been locked down. Never have entire countries inflicted such enormous damage to their own economies and distorted their health systems away from all other activities, to deal with a virus.
I felt, right from the start, that the potential harms from lockdown could well exceed any – speculative – reduction in Covid deaths. I began by arguing against lockdown from an economic perspective, which many people hated. They felt it was impossible to put a value on a human life, even to attempt to balance money versus health.
Perhaps they were unaware that we do this all the time. It is why NICE – the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence – was established in 2000. It is what all healthcare systems are forced to do. No country can afford to throw unlimited resources at healthcare. We all must decide what we can, and cannot, afford to do. Tough decisions to make, but essential.
Perhaps I came at the lockdown from a different viewpoint from most other people. When the pandemic took off, I was analysing the impact of economic and social upheaval on mortality. I was looking specifically at the breakup of the Soviet Union, as I knew that there had been a massive health impact from the rapid and uncontrolled “transformation” from a socialist to a market-based system.
An exhaustive study by three Austrian academics of the fallout from the dissolution of the communist bloc demonstrates the economic devastation it wrought:
“The immediate economic consequences of transformation were significant falls in gross national product. For example, between 1990 and 1993, real GDP had declined in Lithuania -18 percent, Ukraine -10 percent, Russia -10.1 percent and Tajikistan -12.2 percent. The first 10 years of transformation was a period of great social disruption and chaos. The introduction of a market system of exchange led to a severe decline in gross domestic product, contraction of the labour market, and unemployment leading to social malaise including a rising death and suicide rate.”
What was the true impact on health? My main research interest is in cardiovascular medicine, and I was focussed on deaths from coronary heart disease (CHD). In lay terms, this means deaths from heart attacks. I had just put together the graph below, using Lithuanian data.
As you can see, there was a dramatic increase in CHD deaths in 1989, the year that the Berlin wall fell. Lithuanians commenced their singing revolution, and there were mass demonstrations for independence, along with significant social upheaval.
The Soviet tanks rolled in, stayed for a bit, then rolled back out again, without doing much. Meanwhile, the Lithuanian GDP fell through the floor, and the rate of CHD virtually doubled over the next three years. A great mountain of increased mortality which makes anything from Covid look like a speed bump.
Of course, there were things over and above economic woes going on in Lithuania. However, I know that economic worries, by themselves, can be deadly. Perhaps the single deadliest thing of all. For instance, a study in South Africa found that people with significant financial worries were 13 times more likely to have a heart attack:
“People who reported significant financial stress were 13 times more likely to have a heart attack than those who had minimal or no stress. Among those who experienced moderate work-related stress levels, the chances of having a heart attack were 5.6 times higher.”
