Since the coronavirus shutdown began, nearly 17 million Americans have lost their jobs. That’s one-tenth of the nation’s workforce. It’s a public-health disaster. If the shutdown drags on, as many public-health experts recommend it should, it is almost certain to kill more Americans than the virus.

The academics and public-health officials who have concocted models of the virus’s spread are telling us that we have to continue the shutdown to save thousands of lives. It’s too bad none of their models considers the deaths that will be caused by unemployment.

Before the virus hit, America’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percent, the lowest in 50 years. Now Goldman Sachs predicts unemployment could spike to 15 percent by midyear. A St. Louis Federal Reserve economist grimly predicts 32 percent unemployment — worse than during the Great Depression.

Job losses cause extreme suffering. Every 1 percent hike in the unemployment rate will likely produce a 3.3 percent increase in drug-overdose deaths and a 0.99 percent increase in suicides, according to data from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the medical journal Lancet.

These are facts based on past experience, not models. If unemployment hits 32 percent, some 77,000 Americans are likely to die from suicide and drug overdoses as a result of layoffs. Deaths of despair.

Then add the predictable deaths from alcohol abuse caused by ­unemployment. Health economist Michael French from the University of Miami found a “significant association between job loss” and binge drinking and alcoholism.

The impact of layoffs goes ­beyond suicide, drug overdosing and drinking, however. Overall, the death rate for an unemployed person is 63 percent higher than for someone with a job, according to findings in the journal Social Science & Medicine.

Now do the math: Layoff-related deaths could far outnumber the 60,400 coronavirus deaths predicted by University of Washington researchers. This comparison isn’t meant to understate the horror of the coronavirus for those who get it and their families.

But heavy-handed state edicts to close all “nonessential businesses” need to be reassessed in light of the predictable harm to the lives, livelihoods and health of the uninfected.

The shutdown was originally explained as a way to “flatten the curve,” allowing time to expand health-care capacity, so lives wouldn’t be needlessly lost in overwhelmed hospitals.

When the shutdown is lifted, cases will increase. Some epidemiologists predict the virus could return in a second wave this fall. But as President Trump reported Friday, hospitals are ready now, supplied with ventilators, caregivers and beds. Some cities are now oversupplied. Even New York state, with half the cases in the ­nation, reports enough beds. Temporary bed capacity provided by the military is empty (though some local hospitals have complained of red tape preventing patients from being sent there).

The president’s social-distancing guidelines expire April 30, suggesting the possibility of restarting parts of the economy shortly thereafter.

To make reopening possible, schools should resume in most places, so working parents can ­return to jobs. Even in the Empire State, only a single child under the age of 10 has died. That’s tragic, but very unusual. Some 84 percent of fatalities in New York are people over 60. We have a duty to preserve human life, but we’re called to allocate our efforts reasonably, show concern for all lives.

On Monday, governors in several states heavily hit by the coronavirus announced they would work together regionally on plans to phase out the shutdown. On Tuesday, Trump announced a council assembled to formulate plans for reopening the nation for business.

It won’t be done by a flick of the switch. Getting back to business will hinge on testing, accommodations employers make for workers’ safety and the willingness of consumers to patronize restaurants, gyms and other businesses again.

The president’s public-health advisers want the virus to“determine the timetable.” But Trump should also take into account the concerns of the silent majority suffering from the shutdown. It’s more than just their jobs on the line. Their lives are, too.

Betsy McCaughey, a former lieutenant governor of New York, is chairwoman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.