Are you not contradicting yourself here?
I don't think so. The bigger picture part of the story is the question of whether the real problem is a dangerous and contagious virus (which lockdown restrictions are attempting to contain) or whether the real problem is unnecessary and unacceptable government overreach (shown in lockdown restrictions). And there is probably
some of both, but I believe the real problem is the virus, and that, broadly speaking, our current set of restrictions are necessary for controlling the virus, and without those control measures we would have a bigger problem on our hands.
This applies to economic arguments too. If the real problem was the restrictions, then immediately after easing them we would see the economy and life return to normal. Looking around the rest of the world, I don't think that's true. We've seen places that eased restrictions and then had to reimpose them. We've seen places that removed restrictions, but many individuals have been more cautious with their activity, particularly if case numbers rose as a result of restrictions being removed. That has an effect on the economy. One of the goals of getting higher vaccination numbers and lower case numbers (the lower case numbers in part through our current lockdown) is to give individuals less reason to worry and more chance to act normally
and safely (though personally I don't think we'll be completely back to "normal").
The mental health issue is a real issue. I'm certainly not denying it. And it's not an individual issue - it's a community issue. It's something that I gather is expected to continue to affect many for years. However, like the economic case, I don't think it's something we can consider without considering the virus. If case numbers rise sharply, many people will find it harder to cope. With Victoria's leap in numbers today I could see it on the ABC live blog and in the people I interacted with (electronically). If someone close to you becomes seriously ill or dies, that will have a mental health impact, and higher case numbers will mean that happens to more people. Being on a ventilator will have a mental health impact. And an overloaded hospital system will have a significant mental health impact on the workers within that hospital system. From
this recent article:
A recent survey of more than 7800 Australian health care workers, most of whom were based in Victoria, found more than 40 per cent had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder by the final stages of the state’s second wave (although few recognised them as such).
I'm not going to try and weigh up the costs of different strategies to find the perfect strategy for either the economy or for mental health. It's way above my pay grade. Maybe we could find different tradeoffs that are a bit better, maybe we couldn't. But I think it's important to remember that, at least in my view, the real problem is the virus. I would love to be able to go back to a world much more like late 2019. But we can't. Every approach has costs and places burdens on the entire community (though those burdens are unequally distributed, and different approaches may
shift burdens to different parts of the population).