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A wave of new research suggests social separation is bad for us. Individuals with less social connection have disrupted sleep patterns, altered immune systems, more inflammation and higher levels of stress hormones. One recent study found that isolation increases the risk of heart disease by 29 percent and stroke by 32 percent.Another analysis that pooled data from 70 studies and 3.4 million people found that socially isolated individuals had a 30 percent higher risk of dying in the next seven years, and that this effect was largest in middle age.Loneliness can accelerate cognitive decline in older adults, and isolated individuals are twice as likely to die prematurely as those with more robust social interactions. These effects start early: Socially isolated children have significantly poorer health 20 years later, even after controlling for other factors. All told, loneliness is as important a risk factor for early death as obesity and smoking.Policy makers who continue to push lockdowns as a serious solution to the coronavirus choose to ignore these realities, the same way we’ve seen the catastrophic economic effects of the lockdowns overlooked.These unintended consequences are too serious to ignore, however. Lockdowns come with serious costs to mental health and threaten to thrust tens of millions of people into extreme poverty.Meanwhile, the actual benefits of the lockdowns remain elusive.It’s time that policymakers owned up to an inconvenient truth: their policies cannot save lives, they can only trade lives, as economist Ant Davies and political scientist James Harrigan noted early in the pandemic.QuoteIn times of crisis, people want someone to do something, and don’t want to hear about tradeoffs. This is the breeding ground for grand policies driven by the mantra, “if it saves just one life.” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo invoked the mantra to defend his closure policies. The mantra has echoed across the country from county councils to mayors to school boards to police to clergy as justification for closures, curfews, and enforced social distancing.Rational people understand this isn’t how the world works. Regardless of whether we acknowledge them, tradeoffs exist.[size={defaultattr}][font={defaultattr}]This is an economic reality. What’s tragic is that the tradeoffs increasingly look worse and worse, despite the refusal of many politicians and experts to acknowledge it.Source: FEE.orgJonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune.Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.[/font][/size]
In times of crisis, people want someone to do something, and don’t want to hear about tradeoffs. This is the breeding ground for grand policies driven by the mantra, “if it saves just one life.” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo invoked the mantra to defend his closure policies. The mantra has echoed across the country from county councils to mayors to school boards to police to clergy as justification for closures, curfews, and enforced social distancing.Rational people understand this isn’t how the world works. Regardless of whether we acknowledge them, tradeoffs exist.