The world population is 7.7 billion. According to my humble calculation a global death toll of ~250,000 comes to 0.000324%
That’s the global death rate from the virus, that is if you can trust the numbers said to have died *from* the virus, but even so. Given that not all deaths have been recorded or reported, let’s assume the number is close enough.
Of course people would argue that it’s the lockdown that is keeping the death toll so low. Even assuming this is the case, which is not clear as the science on this is not out yet, the pandemic of trauma and deaths from its causes, incluing physical ill-health, suicides, addictions, deaths from undiagnosed illness and neglect of existing conditions because of prioritising this virus, the lifelong impact from financial ruin, as a direct result of the overreaction to the virus and the lockdown is just srarting to become apparent and will reverberate for decades.
In a pathetically inhumane, unequal, unjust society (world?) run by neoliberal economics, access to good quality mental health services is limited to those who can pay for it privately. The rest of the public are given medication or useless ‘treatments’.
So many third sector services that provide good quality mental health help are going under now and won’t survive the lockdown. Even on a good day they’ve only been able to meet a small fraction of the real demand. So there is a real pandemic already there and now worsening and society is ill-equipped to meet it.
250,000 dead – compare that to the numbers dying from hunger in the world every day, from preventable malaria, from our proxy wars in the Yemen, our invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan; how about Syria and how about all the health problems, deaths, trauma and life-long psychological illness suffered by millions (yes millions) of people like you and me made refugees because of what we did/are doing to their countries.
How about all this criminal and devastating wasted potential of people who will never be allowed to become all they can become? Not being able to fulfil our potential is bad for our individual mental and physical health but is also a huge loss to us as a species.
I did not include the massive increase in cancer diagnosis in our midst (in 2015 there were 1000 cancer deaths per day in England) probably caused by our pollution and destruction of the environment, the toxins we consume in our food and water and of course stress caused by financial struggles and psychological trauma from many causes…
People should get a grip.
https://apple.news/Aup8kHyPPT2uNpOtNj6yvPQ