By Jerry Bellune
JerryBellune@yahoo.com
Elvis is dead and some of us aren't feeling so good either.
Joking aside, anxieties related to job security, financial instability, grief from a loved one's death or loneliness are plaguing an increasing number of us in Lexington County,
 Among 5,412 Americans surveyed at the end of June, 41% reported adverse mental or behavioral health conditions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
The number is higher among younger adults between 18 and 24, with 75% reporting experiencing such conditions.
Just over 10% of adults reported seriously considering suicide in the previous 30 days before June, the CDC said, approximately twice the number reported in 2018. 
The US death toll stands at 176,223, according to Aug. 24 data from the CDC, and at least 5.68 million cases.
This has led economnists and a few epidemiologists to ask if the locckdowns, stay at home orders and non-essential business shutdowns were an over reaction.
We did not go this far in previous epidemics including the Spanish flu in 1918. These  draconian tactics have not been used in modern times.
Severe and broad restrictions on daily activity helped send the world into its deepest peacetime slump since the Great Depression, writes Greg Ip in the Wall Street Journal.
The equivalent of 400 million jobs have been lost world-wide, 13 million in the US alone. Global output is on track to fall 5% this year, far worse than during the financial crisis, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The evidence suggests lockdowns were an overly blunt and economically costly tool. They are politically difficult to keep in place for long enough to stamp out the virus. 
Alternative strategies could slow covid-19's spread at less cost. 
Some experts are urging policy makers to pursue these more targeted restrictions and interventions.
Canada concluded that restrictions on movement were “impractical, if not impossible.” 
The CDC didn’t recommend stay-at-home orders or closing nonessential businesses.
Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong showed how to stop Covid-19 without lockdowns. They cut travel to China, began widespread testing to isolate the infected and traced contacts.
Sweden took a different approach. Instead of lockdowns, it imposed only modest restrictions to keep cases at levels its hospitals could handle.
As a result, Sweden has paid less of an economic price, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. 
Sweden’s current infection and death rates are as low as the rest of Europe’s. That has resulted in herd immunity - the point when enough of the population is immune, person-to-person transmission declines and the epidemic dies out.
By March, it was too late for the U.S. to emulate the test-and-trace strategy of Asia. The CDC had botched the initial development and distribution of tests, and limited testing capacity meant countless infections went undetected. 
Rather than lockdowns, experts urge using only measures proven to maximize lives saved while minimizing economic and social disruption.
Emphasize the reopening of the highest economic benefit, lowest risk endeavors.
Social distancing can take into account widely varying risks by age. The virus is especially deadly for the elderly. 
Nursing homes account for 0.6% of the population but 45% of fatalities, says the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a free market think tank. Better isolating those residents would have saved many lives at little economic cost.
By contrast, fewer children have died this year from covid-19 than from flu. And studies in Sweden, where most schools stayed open, and the Netherlands, where they reopened in May, found teachers at no greater risk than the overall population. 
The best options are face masks, social distancing, stepped up testing and contact tracing, all of which we have begun to do in Lexington County and elsewhere.
We don't need to close businesses, churches or schools. We need to keep them open with all of the safeguards of sanitizers, temperature checks and good ventilation, the expert say.