Opening Statement: The Life-Threatening Unintended Consequences of Pandemic Lockdowns — Brad Polumbo, Foundation for Economic Education

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An opening statement titled "The Life-Threatening Unintended Consequences of Pandemic Lockdowns" by Brad Polumbo, Editor at the Foundation for Economic Education, dated March 17, 2021 in the archive's congressional materials. The statement argues that COVID-19 lockdown orders produced unintended consequences, citing CDC figures that 25 percent of young adults considered suicide and that emergency room mental health visits rose 24 percent for children ages 5 to 11 and 31 percent for adolescents aged 12 to 17. It cites CDC data on over 81,000 drug overdose deaths in the 12 months ending in May 2020 and a reported 8.1% rise in domestic violence. It also cites Yelp figures on 163,735 business closures and states that the Paycheck Protection Program and other federal measures cannot repair the economic damage.

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Opening Statement: The Life-Threatening Unintended Consequences of Pandemic Lockdowns

Brad Polumbo
Editor at the Foundation for Economic Education

It’s not often that I break down in tears while reporting on a story. But that’s exactly what
happened on Monday when I covered a series of interviews with doctors across the globe
warning that COVID-19 lockdown orders are leading to an “international epidemic” of child
suicide.

“We are very surprised by the intensity of the desire to die among children who may be 12 or 13
years old,” a French doctor said. “We sometimes have children of 9 who already want to die.
And it’s not simply a provocation or a blackmail via suicide. It is a genuine wish to end their
lives.”

The number of youth suicide attempts his hospital sees in a month has more than doubled amid
pandemic restrictions.

Here in the US, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 25 percent of young adults
considered suicide during the lockdowns, while overall mental health issues appear to have
spiked as well. CDC data show a 24 percent increase in emergency room mental health visits for
children ages 5 to 11, compared to 2019. Among adolescents aged 12 to 17, that increase is 31
percent.

The spike in depression and suicidality triggered by the social isolation of pandemic lockdowns
is certainly not what proponents of the restrictions intended. They simply want, as we all do, to
stop the spread of COVID-19 and bring the pandemic to an end. But as Henry Hazlitt explained
in his book Economics in One Lesson, responsible policymaking means looking beyond
intentions and immediate effects. It means taking into account a policy’s indirect consequences
and its collateral damage. And sweeping government interventions tend to be plagued by
unintended consequences: sometimes lethal ones.

There has been perhaps no more dramatic example of this lethality than the unintended
consequences of pandemic lockdowns. Government officials took drastic, unprecedented steps of
closing businesses en masse, criminalizing citizens’ livelihoods, and essentially placing healthy
Americans under a form of house arrest. The lockdowns and restrictions have been normalized,
but they are not normal. My colleagues and I at the Foundation for Economic Education have
chronicled over the last year how these attempts to address a public health crisis have generated
their own crises and have likely done more harm than good.

The aforementioned mental health crisis is only one of many that have emerged as a result of
these unprecedented government restrictions. We have also seen an enormous uptick in addiction
and drug overdoses. According to the CDC, “Over 81,000 drug overdose deaths occurred in the
United States in the 12 months ending in May 2020, the highest number of overdose deaths ever
recorded in a 12-month period.”
Full data will take years to analyze, but state-and-local level examples of this tragic trend are too
numerous to list.

For instance, the Boston Globe reported that Maine overdose deaths "climbed nearly one-third in
2020 to set a record." In the summer of 2020, a coroner in Ohio told the Washington Post their
office ran out of wheeled carts to put the bodies of overdose victims in.

Meanwhile, an analysis from the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice
found that domestic violence spiked 8.1% after lockdowns were imposed. The study’s author
said that this figure is, if anything, an underestimate—“a floor, not a ceiling.”

None of this even touches on the economic devastation pandemic lockdowns have wrought.
According to the business website Yelp, 60% of the 163,735 businesses that closed between
March 1st and August 31 of 2020 will never reopen.

Small businesses, in particular, have suffered. More than 100,000 small businesses permanently
shuttered last year amid pandemic lockdowns and riots, while polling shows that 60 percent of
small business owners worry they won’t make it through June 2021.

From mental health to drug overdoses to domestic violence, the immeasurable economic and
social damage lockdowns have wrought cannot be made whole by any amount of welfare,
stimulus payments, or business grants. Lockdowns and continued pandemic restrictions are
what’s crushing the American economy and the American spirit.

Neither the Paycheck Protection Program nor other fraud-rife and inefficient federal band-aids
can heal the gaping wound lockdowns have carved in our economy.

Policymakers who continue to perpetuate lockdown policies and heavy pandemic restrictions
must discover the humility necessary to see that their sweeping actions have consequences
beyond their control, understanding, and intentions. Until they do, millions of Americans will
continue to suffer silently as they bear the unintended consequences.


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