The death toll from the Coronavirus in New York City and the surrounding areas is going to require years of study and investigation to understand how things were able to get so bad so quickly.

However, one of the many mishandlings of the Coronavirus was to treat the rest of America like it was New York City and impose on us restrictions that did more harm than good.

Case in point:

Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

Doctors at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek say they have seen more deaths by suicide during this quarantine period than deaths from the COVID-19 virus.

The head of the trauma in the department believes mental health is suffering so much, it is time to end the shelter-in-place order.

“Personally I think it’s time,” said Dr. Mike deBoisblanc. “I think, originally, this (the shelter-in-place order) was put in place to flatten the curve and to make sure hospitals have the resources to take care of COVID patients.We have the current resources to do that and our other community health is suffering.”

The numbers are unprecedented, he said.

“We’ve never seen numbers like this, in such a short period of time,” he said. “I mean we’ve seen a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.”

The American people struck a gentlemen’s agreement that we’d shut down for two weeks to flatten the curve.  That deal was altered and the lockdown has gone on for months, and the threat of it becoming semi-permanent is real.

Outside of a few very specific hot-zones, the cost of human lives from that is worse than the virus.

If this was truly about saving lives than data like this would justify lifting the lockdown immediately.

However it won’t because clearly the lockdown isn’t about preventing hospitals from being swamped by COVID patients anymore.

These deaths don’t matter to politicians because they can’t use used to consolidate power.