This new "Covid FAQ" website that lockdowner Tory MP Neil O'Brien is pushing has some absurdly bad takes on it. Consider the following, which denies that deaths are likely to arise from lockdown-induced economic turmoil.
Let's deconstruct it:
Its sole source they cite for this claim isn't even an academic study. It's a PowerPoint slideshow from a talk that Deaton gave back in April. The passage quoted is a generic bullet point with no specific data or elaboration (although, interesting, the Covid FAQ website leaves out the very next bullet point by Deaton, which says "Although suicides do increase" in recessions).
There's a large empirical literature that does in fact connect increased mortality to joblessness and other longterm effects of recessions. The NBER just released one such study specific to Covid. It is projecting almost 1 million deaths over the next 15 years that can be traced to pandemic-related unemployment. So we now have clear and specific empirical work directly contradicting what the FAQ claims.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28304/w28304.pdf
- Economic downturns cause more than just suicides. They also have a well-documented link to increased substance abuse. And severe substance abuse spikes translate into substance abuse deaths.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167629617303387
- We also have specific evidence from the CDC that substance abuse deaths shot up at a historically unprecedented rate between March and June (the latest data they have released) coinciding directly with the lockdowns.