How COVID-19 is saving lives: Looking for ways to redeem tragedy for eternal good

At this writing, there are more than 127,000 confirmed cases
of COVID-19 worldwide, with more than 4,700 deaths. The pandemic is causing
global chaos on a level unprecedented in my lifetime. From physical suffering
to economic turmoil, political controversy, and personal fear, the virus is
clearly affecting the world in calamitous ways.

It might surprise you, however, to learn that the virus is also accomplishing some good.

For instance, G-FEED, which describes itself as “an
interdisciplinary group working cooperatively to understand the relationship
between society and the environment,” has published an article by Marshall
Burke (environmental sciences professor at Stanford University) with the title,
“COVID-19 reduces economic activity, which reduces pollution, which saves
lives.”

The article focuses on the massive reduction in air
pollution in China resulting from the drastic economic slowdown in that country
following its aggressive response to the virus. Ground-based concentrations of
key pollutants fell substantially across much of the country. Given clear
evidence that breathing dirty air contributes heavily to premature mortality,
the author then calculates the effect of this drop in pollution on mortality in
the country.

Dr. Burke determines that, by the most conservative
calculation, two months of reductions in pollution likely saved the lives of 1,400
children under the age of five and 51,700 adults over the age of seventy in
China. This would be twenty times the number of lives lost directly to the
virus (at the time of the article’s writing on March 8).

As Dr. Burke notes, “It seems clearly incorrect and foolhardy to conclude that pandemics are good for health.” He adds, “The effects calculated above are just the health benefits of the air pollution changes, and do not account for the many other short- or long-term negative consequences of social and economic disruption on health or other outcomes; these…