Ma it's worth it? Stay locked up at home? Stay unemployed? Losing income, often to the point of falling into the already dense crowd of the poor? Lose sleepless nights in anguish that the company fails, creature of a life or of many lives?
La forced closure, then, also has highs human and psychological costs, in addition to the still incalculable economic ones. People who can't stand each other and whose coexistence was a balancing act between parallel existences. Or, conversely, people who are forced to stay apart (parents and children far away, for example). People suffering from hypochondria for whom the epidemic is a constant torture. People who fall into depression. Life projects that remain suspended in limbo: we will get married, but when? Not to mention the people who have not had the opportunity to say goodbye to their loved ones, even when they have not left due to the coronavirus.
So, is it worth it? The answer is simple and clear: «Yes». A fortissimo and resounding «Yes». We are saving hundreds of thousands of livesnot to mention millions. Only in Italy. Not a few dozen. Granted and not granted that there are those who cynically use the abacus of this macabre count to establish an acceptable loss threshold (someone actually did it: right Mr. Boris Johnson?). Hundreds of thousands, more likely millions.
Il exact account we will never know, but the order of magnitude is this. An order of magnitude that is based on two variables: the number of people who will die from this epidemic and the number of people who would have died if we had let the virus free rein. We estimate, with inevitable great approximation, the two variables.
How many are the dead what will we actually have? Statisticians and econometricians are busy making this forecast, also to understand when the peak of the epidemic will be reached, the number of deaths from SARS-Cov2 being the variable least distorted by the various factors which instead make it difficult to understand the true level of the infected. Which, for example, depends on the amount of swabs carried out and on which people you decide to do them, because the ability to carry out tests is also limited and it is not immediate to raise it to command.
We quote two estimates of the dead we will eventually count. The first follows the path indicated by Mauro Maltagliati, of the University of Florence, and published in Neodemos and leads, according to the calculations updated by Michele Tettamanzi of REF Ricerche, to 15 thousand total deaths. Unfortunately, this path is not very reliable, because it varies a lot with the data itself: an increasing number of deaths also raises the final estimate, which, therefore, resembles an observation more than a forecast. To understand: until the horrid figure of Friday March 27, the model indicated 12.500 dead.
The second estimate is based on a different model, applied by Carlo Favero of Bocconi University to Alone Lombardia. For which Favero estimates 25 deaths (27 on March 3732). If we extrapolate, with considerable arbitrariness, the Lombard estimate to the entire nation, we would arrive at 42 thousand dead. A massacre.
However, the real number of coronavirus deaths is also uncertain. For one simple reason: swabs are done on the living. AND many die without help. Both because the health system is already at the extremes of effort and strength and because the disease degenerates very quickly.
This fact was observed at Nembro, one of the most affected municipalities in the Bergamo area. Comparing the deaths in the first eleven weeks of 2020 with the average in the same period of the last five years, Claudio Cancelli and Luca Foresti calculated that the deaths from SARS-Cov2 are 4 times higher higher than the official ones. In Pesaro and Cernusco sul Naviglio 6 times and in Bergamo even 10 times. If Nembro's multiple were valid for all of Italy, the real coronavirus deaths would already be at least 36 thousand, instead of the over 9 thousand as of March 27. And the final number would be at least 60mila with the Maltagliati-Tettamanzi estimate and by 130mila with that Favero.
A terrible budget. But still nothing compared to what would have happened if there hadn't been the measures. According to Cancelli and Foresti we would have arrived at 600mila, considering Nembro, where 1% of the population has disappeared, as a representative monad of Italy. Really 2,4 million, following the reasoning of Tomas Pueyo.
In other words, with closure and enclosure we are saving at least 470 lives in Italy, but more likely 2,2 million.
None of us are Wonderwoman or Superman, but we have great power today, of life and death. Ours and others. AndWith great power comes great responsibility.
