18 Crucial Decisions
not die from COVID-19). Based on demographic statistics, the average age of these people would be 70.7 years old.6 Due to all our warnings and lockdowns and mandates, it appears that the biggest impact we have had is to delay the spread of the virus. The question is, who benefitted? Some did. My mother could have been one. High risk people such as the elderly have gotten more time before being exposed. At seventy-six years old, and in the final stages of Alzheimer’s, my mom is very frail, and very high risk. I am certain that if coronavirus had gotten into her facility early on, she would likely have passed away. I believe that she, and others like her, will add another year or so to their lives because of all of this. The question is, was it worth it? What did we sacrifice so that my mother would be at lower risk? What Were the Costs? On March 1, 2020, US unemployment was at one of its lowest levels in history at 3.7%. At that time, roughly 5.8 million Americans were out of work, but there were about seven million job openings. In other words, there were more jobs than we had people who wanted them. Two months later, on May 1, over 33 million Americans had lost their jobs due to the lockdowns. This led to an unemployment level of 25.1 percent, higher than the worst year of the Great Depression (24.9 percent in 1933). Economists vary widely in their projections on recovery, from as soon as six months to as long as five years. But if we assume a nominal oneyear period from the highest unemployment to the lowest, that is an average of sixteen million Americans out of work for that period. At an average annual income of $56,516 per year,7 that is nearly one trillion dollars of direct financial loss to families. “Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics,” cdc.gov, Center for Disease Control, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_ weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex. 7 “Income and Poverty in the United States, 2015,” The United States Census Bureau, updated September 13, 2016, Bernadette D. Proctor, Jessica L. Semega, and Melissa A. Kollar, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2016/demo/ p60-256.html 6
