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For months, President Donald Trump has predicted that deaths indirectly caused by stay-at-home orders would outweigh those caused by covid-19 itself." You're going to have suicides by the thousands," he said in late March. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar offered a version of that argument in The Washington Post this month, as he backed the president's case for reopening the economy:" The economic crisis brought on by the virus is a silent killer," he wrote, one that" will likely cause tens of thousands of excess deaths" from suicides and opioid overdoses. Similarly, more than 600 physicians recently signed a letter-an effort organized by a conservative group-describing business closures as a" mass casualty incident" because of increased" alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, heart attack" and other effects.

The long-term health consequences of a significant recession, especially a prolonged one …