When doctors go on strike, death rates go down. In 2016 such an observation would be "provocative" party conversation but now that doctors are sacrosanct, it is grounds for instant disinvitation— the party has become a lynch mob.
The most comprehensive review of medical impact of doctors' strikes is published in the academic journal Social Science and Medicine. A team of researchers at Emory and Georgetown Universities in the US analyzed five physician strikes around the world, all between 1976 and 2003.
Doctors withdrew their labor, from between 9 days and 17 weeks. Yet all the different studies report population mortality either stays the same, or even decreases, during medical strikes. Not a single study found death rates increased during the weeks of the strikes.
For example, in Los Angeles County, California in January 1976, doctors went on strike in protest over soaring medical *malpractice insurance premiums*. For five weeks, approximately 50% of doctors in the county reduced their practice and withheld care.
Two of the articles reviewed by Cunningham et al, found the strike may have actually prevented more deaths than it caused.