Every year, 9 million people die of hunger according to Mercy Corps (International relief agency).
That would be an additional 9 million deaths from starvation.
Assume, as I do, that number's too high (I can't accuse certain epidemiologists of fear-mongering and then pretend that the UN Humanitarian Chief wouldn't also fear-monger).
Let's be very critical and assume the real number would be, say, only 20% of that. That would still be almost 2 million additional deaths from starvation.
That's a cost of developed countries' economic lockdowns.
It's not just about getting haircuts, and if you focus on that, you're choosing to ignore real human costs.
"Ignore the impoverished" isn't much of a moral high ground.
That said, I think at some point a massive economic slowdown would happen whether there's a lockdown or not. As noted elsewhere, Sweden had a substantial economic downturn through primarily voluntary social distancing, and this also seems to have been in the case in Japan for Q4~Q1 2020 (in spite of the lack of cases).
The debate I think needs to move forward from "we care more about people's lives because we support <lockdowns/no lockdowns> given that behaviorally the pandemic's taken a rather substantial bite out of demand in general.
We've yet to come up with a decent framework where the worst costs of a global economic downturn aren't, in the end, borne by the poorest countries - particularly when the available bail-out mechanisms for them are....iffy, at best in how they condition aid.
You'd think something like the IMF or Worldbank ought to be structured better to handle this sort of thing, but I haven't seen an effective set of policy proposals to even try to address this issue.
We have absolutely no evidence that there wouldn't be massive economic consequences even in the absence of any government intervention in regulating behavior over Covid-19 at all.
And simply beating on the drum that simply opening up the economy will magically make people want to go spend time in crowded spaces and go back to life as normal ignores the substantial evidence by public polling that suggests people have absolutely no desire to do that right now.
Further, in advocating for opening prior to having the necessary infrastructure necessary for safely operating in a pre-vaccine environment through contract-tracing and mass testing, we simply open up the possibility that we're inviting cyclical bouts of flare-ups and additional waves of transmission, which would make it really hard to boost consumer confidence to the point of meaningfully opening the economy.