China’s coronavirus lockdown likely saved tens of thousands of lives of children and the elderly by slashing air pollution from factories and vehicles, according to a new analysis by a Stanford University scientist.
“Even under these more conservative assumptions, the lives saved due to the pollution reductions are roughly 20x the number of lives that have been directly lost to the virus,” Burke writes, using statistics current on March 8.and during coronavirus lockdown in 2020 .Burke cautions that his statistics are a prediction of mortality impacts, not a measurement. And his numbers do not include other negative consequences of the lockdown.
The effects were most dramatic in southern Chinese cities like Shanghai and Wuhan, he said, where wintertime pollution comes mainly from cars and small industry. “The decline in nitrogen dioxide emissions over the Po Valley in northern Italy is particularly evident,” said Claus Zehner, ESA’s mission manager for the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite. “Although there could be slight variations in the data due to cloud cover and changing weather, we are very confident that the reduction in emissions that we can see coincides with the lockdown in Italy causing less traffic and industrial activities.”...
“That is NOT to say that the pandemic is some kind of a blessing in disguise, with all the suffering it has imposed on people. At the most, it shows it's easy to overlook chronic, long term health threats such as air pollution, and thus, harder to muster an adequate response.”
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