The study also looked at the number of years of good health restored to the people who were saved from COVID-19, compared with the number of healthy years lost by the people who died due to the effects of the national recession, such as the poverty, loss of health insurance, mental illness and other issues that stemmed from job losses. .

The UM researchers determined it would take an economic loss of about $11 million to $17 million to result in one death — the smaller amount if the lion's share of the loss was suffered by the rich, and the larger amount if people from all economic brackets lost the same percentage from their incomes.   .

The study found that from March through August 2020, the widespread lockdowns and other mitigation measures in the United States potentially saved an estimated 866,350 to 1,711,150 lives. But harms caused by the economic downturn potentially caused 57,922 to 245,055 deaths.

The study looked at the number of "quality adjusted years" gained by the lockdowns, or lost due to the economic fallout of mitigation strategies. The measure is frequently used in health economics studies because of differences in each individual's age and health status, Yakusheva said. A quality adjusted life year represents one year of life in perfect health

The results showed that people who were saved by the mitigation measures had fewer quality-adjusted years remaining than the people who died as a result of the recession

"We evaluated the full packet of public health measures as it was implemented in the beginning of the pandemic, but lesser mitigation measures may have worked just as well to reduce lives lost," Yakusheva said