This is heartbreaking, and by no means anomalous[1]. I know a number of people that have committed suicide during the lock downs.
It is becoming a political topic, which is always risky to weigh in on publicly, but I do implore people to keep in mind when deciding on policy the law of unintended consequences. Everything in life is a series of trade offs, including the decision to lock down. Even if you believe the lock downs have been effective, they cause real damage and disruption to people's lives and mental health. It is serious and needs to be considered and weighed.
What we have is a variation on the trolley problem, not a simple "save people with lock downs or not." I have no idea where the right balance is, but I've been shocked and saddened at the unwillingness of pro-lock-down people to consider the unintended consequences here. I have plenty of criticism for the anti mask crowd too, but this comment is already long enough.
[1]: I have no scientific data to back this claim up. This is my opinion extrapolated from anecdata. Take with a grain of salt
In the UK in 2019 there were 5,691 suicides, a massive increase and a general increasing trend
Provisional data for UK in 2020 showed 845 deaths from April-June, or a rate of 3,380, however the data can takes months to come out due to inquests, especially this year as they've been delayed.
However even if suicide rates had doubled. In the UK in 2020 there have been 75,000 plus excess deaths. Based on the observed IFR, if Covid had run wild this would be more like 600,000 -- assuming no health care system collapse (which would have happened, and still might)
While suicide is a tragedy, and in the UK a worryingly high one, the effects of covid (which aren't all due to lockdowns) would likely have increased it (economic downturns cause suicide). In any case, it's a very small number compared with the excess deaths that covid causes.
The British Office for National Statistics concludes that the impact of the lockdown in terms of QALY (quality-adjusted life year) is higher than that of the disease itself:
> from March 2020 to more than five years from now, the impacts of lockdown and a resulting recession are estimated to reduce England’s health by over 970,000 QALYs – the health impacts of contracting COVID-19 are still unclear in the long term, but between March 2020 and March 2021, these represent 570,000 lost QALYs[1]
That being said,
> While these negative health impacts of lockdown exceed the impacts of COVID-19 directly, they are much smaller than the negative impacts estimated for a scenario in which these measures are not in place; without these mitigations, the impact of direct COVID-19 deaths alone on both mortality and morbidity would be much higher – an estimated 439,000 excess deaths resulting from COVID-19, and 3,000,000 QALYs lost.[1]
These studies all assume that there wouldn't be a recession without a lockdown. This is fallacious. Even without a lockdown, consumers are going to stop going to large events, restaurants, movies etc when they see that it causes death...
You might have missed reading the entire comment you replied to. The authors of the study explicitly stated that while the effects of the lockdown exceed the effects of COVID, the net effects of no lockdown would be worse.
I think what greedo is saying is that since the stuff would happen anyway, it shouldn't be attributed to the lockdown, but should be attributed to COVID.
That is, instead of having 2 categories: (1) effects of COVID and (2) effects of lockdown, with economic downturn put in effects of lockdown, there should be 3 categories: (1) direct effects of COVID, (2) indirect effects of COVID, and (3) effects of lockdown, with economic downturn put in indirect effects of COVID (or at least largely there).
Every time lockdown has been lifted in the country I live in, the restaurants and pubs have quickly gone back to full capacity even as deaths continue and the state only lessened restrictions to improve consumption. The general public has a vague awareness that the victims of COVID are overwhelmingly people aged 75+ with multiple comorbidities. Deaths of younger people are statistical outliers, and claims of "long COVID" are mainly uniformed self-diagnosis by people on the internet, the same people who before COVID were claiming to have "chronic Lyme disease".
Furthermore, that elderly demographic that represents the real risk group, doesn't contribute to the economy much anyway. (In Russia and other economies based on resource extraction, for example, thinktanks have referred to such as "superfluous population").
The British Office for National Statistics concludes that the impact of the covid with lockdown in terms of QALY (quality-adjusted life year) is far lower than impact of covid without lockdown
That is what I said in the second half of my comment. These two statements are not contradictory.
To be precise, the cost of lockdown is 1/3 of the cost of unmitigated covid. The cost of lockdown is mostly borne by the young and healthy while the cost of non-lockdown is mostly borne by the vulnerable. It is a trolley problem.
The cost of non-lockdown would also be borne by the young and healthy, because there would be second order effects - including job losses, business failures, panic buying and food shortages, possible civil unrest, collapse of existing health systems, and loss of essential skilled people at all levels. Among others.
There is no trite healthy vs vulnerable tradeoff here, and it's simply a fantasy to believe that everyone under 40 would be able to get on with life without consequences while the over-55s were dying off quietly.
The reality is far more complicated. Letting Covid run wild would have been far more damaging than mitigation in a huge number of ways - economic, psychological, political, medical, and more.
The one area of valid debate is whether good mitigation strategies were chosen and implemented wisely. Often they weren't. Test and trace, masking, and PPE provision should have been central, allowing more limited lockdowns.
In the most badly hit countries none of that happened, and without them full-spectrum lockdowns were the only (blunt) tool that was left.
> The one area of valid debate is whether good mitigation strategies were chosen and implemented wisely. Often they weren't. Test and trace, masking, and PPE provision should have been central, allowing more limited lockdowns.
> In the most badly hit countries none of that happened, and without them full-spectrum lockdowns were the only (blunt) tool that was left.
This exactly. I get really frustrated with the simplistic argument over whether lockdown measures have been better or worse than doing nothing, because it misses that these were not the only two options. Not even close. When you look at how countries that reacted quickly to the virus and implemented, masking, testing, PPE provisions and sensible social-distancing requirements, it is clear that those countries were able to recover, both economically and socially. In areas, like the United States, that waited until it was too late to do anything, and then were forced to implement lockdowns, the outcome is far worse and the aggregate human toll — irrespective of death count due to the virus — much greater.
As a strong supporter of civil liberties, I’m in a difficult position, when I try to balance some of the more draconian state-run actions of places like Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, with the effects we see in the United States. For all of the many negatives of that kind of government/militaristic control, I can’t help but think that if the US had done that, the global economy, not to mention all of the industries that have evaporated in the US, would have recovered much more strongly by now.
This is absolutely not a trolley problem. This didn’t have to be a choice between two negative outcomes. There were ways to mitigate exposure that could have saved people from dying from the coronavirus, while also limiting the debilitating impact of lockdown. The world's biggest superpower just didn’t do that.
> because there would be second order effects - including job losses, business failures, panic buying and food shortages, possible civil unrest
Could you elaborate on that? Why would there be more of these without a lockdown than with a lockdown?
> collapse of existing health systems
Yes, that seems to be a material and important factor.
> loss of essential skilled people at all levels
Perhaps, but would the impact be material? In particular, how would the number of skilled people lost to unmitigated Covid compare to losses due to natural factors (retirement, non-Covid health issues, moving to a job where the skills are no longer relevant, etc)?
I am not necessarily arguing against your point, but I do feel that your arguments need more refinement to be persuasive.
Correct. This is basically the premise of why QALYs/DALYs are an inappropriate measure in this particular case. Although, the measure in general is unethical.
ONS compares QALY costs in both cases. In essence QALY is a measure of how much people value their life relative to suffering from some condition. The weighting for QALY calculations is based on asking relevant questions such as whether a patient would rather live with their condition or undergo an intervention that may either kill or cure them.
So I’m a perfectly healthy 65 year old, and there is a perfectly healthy 25 year old.* Could you explain how to use QALY to decide whether lockdowns are worth the (very treatable) risk of mental health deterioration vs not locking down and facing the very untreatable risk of death?
The report I'm quoting[1] estimates the lockdown scenario to cost 182k QALYs in mental disorders, 190k QALYs in musculoskeletal disorders, and 157k QALYs in cardiovascular disorders.[1]
Note that if your only risk factor is being 65 years old, implying you are female, it isn't necessarily the case that covid impacts you worse than lockdown.
Everyone dies eventually. So a premature death means months or years of life lost, which can be compared against months or years of less full life due to hardship.
Just FYI, QALYs/DALYs are considered an unethical measure by the European Union, and they have asked governments to abandon its use. One of the reasons why is because it is a simple, linear calculation that values abled-bodies’ lives over disabled people. That is basically the entire premise of the measure, too. It is a human rights issue.
Unfortunately countries like the UK, Canada, and Australia routinely use it. The UK does so especially, and it is well embedded in its NICE guidelines. In the US, this practice was generally abandoned with the passing of the Affordable Care Act. The US system, certainly is the most problematic system of all, though.
That's a fair shake and glad to read about this report's details. Reassuring knowing the thought that went into the decisions. That said, one scenario is a theoretical estimate (based on data from July) which we will never know for certain the outcome.
Most people don't lose their jobs/businesses/careers and kill themselves the next day or even the next month, but that doesn't mean that their eventual decline into depression and suicide wasn't triggered by that loss. And not to get into such a charged discussion, but it's also important to look at the ages of those dying of COVID versus those dying because of how we reacted to COVID.
FWIW, I personally know a couple very successful restauranteurs who descended into despondency and alcoholism to the point where they are effectively non-functional and will likely never open a restaurant again. These people aren’t accounted for in the damage but they are shadows of their former contributions to society.
These people aren’t dead but they are asymptotically close to it for all practical purposes. Even if things opened up tomorrow they would have nowhere to go.
Yes the effects may last a long time, much of the effects should be mittigated by government though (suicide is often because of financial issues - something that governments can fix by issuing a new-deal style work program post vaccination to reboot the economy)
I don’t mean to diminish the gravity of such numbers but don’t projections like this ignore asymptomatic cases? How many of those projected to die here have already contacted it but are immune for whatever reason and never got tested? The death rates across age ranges can only account for confirmed deaths and cases in that range, no? Without testing every single person in an age range we can’t make accurate projections because we can’t know the percentage of “immune” people, no?
They don't ignore asymptomatic cases. IFR is calculated using symptomatic and asymptomatic cases. It's total % of people that die if they get infected, symptomatic or not.
Studies are showing Covid-19 has IFR of 0.5-1% in western world (due to age).
This means if 100% of England got infected, 0.5 to 1% would die. This is not counting that if hospitals got overwhelmed, IFR would increase.
Yes, they do. There is obviously some guesswork involved, but after several seroprevalence studies, these arguments can be laid to rest. There is no giant iceberg of undetected cases, we’re still in the beginning of the pandemic, and IFR is frighteningly high. Especially in older populations.
A government known for its austerity measures is going to mitigate its citizens' financial issues? I find that hard to believe.
I'm not going to engage with someone over the internet about the weighing of people's quality of life years or which side of the fence I come down on there. My post was merely pointing out that extrapolating a suicide rate for 2Q 2020 to the total suicide death number was in error.
>> that doesn't mean that their eventual decline into depression and suicide wasn't triggered by that loss
It's not just loss of jobs/businesses/careers - loss of loved ones to COVID can be a cause of depression too. Allowing more COVID deaths could increase suicides.
It’s at least a pretty common take. I think it’s the idea that we all get so many years. A 25-year-old and an 85-year-old both getting terminal cancers tends to be looked at very differently. Maybe by them, too.
Or look at it in a probabilistic sense. I think the actuarial table puts an 85-year-old at having about 5 years left on average. For a 25-year-old it’s more like 55. So a loss of one causes a loss of much more human life.
I like your second point thinking of "human life years". It's an interesting perspective.
As I commented in a sibling. Drs need these kind of tools to know who to treat first. But governments don't (and shouldn't).
There is a moral point here about the meaning and value of human life that can't be ignored.
As a government you can (and sometimes do) reduce lives to economic value (young will pay more tax over their life time), but other times you need to assess life on a more humanistic level. If we all know we hit the age of 60 and society stops giving a fuck, then I'm going to do very different things, converging on 100% selfishness as I approach 60, as that is the logical thing to do... but a society would fall apart if we did that.
My life definitely degrades in value as I age. The years seem to go by faster and faster and the frequency of novel and profound experiences steadily drops.
But that is to decide on resource allocation, i.e: I have 2 people, and 1 me, which one do I help.
That isn't used by governments to decide on health or economic policy. Else we'd ban old people from hospitals (and save trillions in the process!) and in general make their lives a misery (high tax, low benefits) because their "value" would be approaching 0.
Uh, QALY is definitely used by governments to decide on health and economic policy, but not in the absurd utilitarian way you're imagining.
For example, it's used to prioritize people in transplant queues. The more "use" you can get out of a new organ, the more you'll be prioritized, but it's not the only decider.
Definitely used by government, and as proof you use a medical example... How about a government example? because it definitely isn’t in any modern public policy course taught around the world. So I’m very intrigued by your assertion.
> Based on the observed IFR, if Covid had run wild this would be more like 600,000
I think this is largely over-estimated. Such high fatality rate hasn't happened anywhere in the world, regardless of the lockdown policy or absence thereof. That being said, I concede that this wasn't known at the time of the first wave when strict lockdowns were put in place.
Another point to take into account is that the vast majority of covid victims had very short remaining life expectancy. Not to say that their death don't count, but it is to be taken into account when comparing with suicides. Rather than number of deaths, maybe we could count number of years of life lost.
You’re not taking into account ICU capacity. Many hospitals are basically full NOW, if the case rate, say, doubled you’re going to have marginal cases dieing because they don’t have access to basic care like oxygen.
Bingo. The problem with talking about Covid-19 casualties is there's no argument that'll convince the skeptics: mortality rates are relatively high when we still have hospital capacity, imagine if we had double or triple the number of patients to ICU/hospital capacity? Well... then they'd say that people aren't really dying of Covid-19, but 'from preconditions'... which 45% of the population have at least one of.
10 years lost... I know averages are difficult, but the population of deaths is heavily skewed towards the elderly which implies that most covid victims lost many years.
There have been a number of studies. Finding out correct IFR was a high priority. Even in April it was possible to see this IFR. New York was reporting 0.6-1% depending on the method in April.
I personally went through Italian data where they released deaths/infections by municipality and I found several municipalities where they had 0.5-1% of total population dying from Covid-19.
IFR is about 0.5-1% in countries with older populations (western world). Early on there was a lot of wishful thinking hoping that IFR is much lower but it didn't turn out that way.
> While suicide is a tragedy, and in the UK a worryingly high one, the effects of covid (which aren't all due to lockdowns) would likely have increased it (economic downturns cause suicide).
This is a good point that I think people miss. The equation isn't as simple as "less lockdowns == less suicides". If the pandemic rages even worse, there are a ton of second order effects that could also trigger increasing suicide rates. Family members or friends dying to COVID, getting long term COVID complications yourself, just the emotional stress of hearing about so many deaths, economic impact.
How do we know that there would have been less suicide if there had been no lockdowns? We don't, and expressing it just as a trolley problem is an oversimplification.
Mentally I've compared this experience to the Blitz, which my grandparents lived through. Heightened fear of death or injury striking without warning; massive changes to daily routines; no timeline for how long it would endure but the likelihood of it lasting for years. Some people were psychologically prepared to cope and some weren't.
If you were honest and serious with the response, the lockdowns did not need to be longer than two weeks. This would have had minimal psychic toll. You can see right now that the countries that were successful with the virus response like Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam have much less restricted societies right now and also did throughout the summer. They are all mostly open with mask wearing requirements. They might have some restrictions on stadiums and large indoor gatherings but everything else is going on as normal.
You can end the lock downs quickly if you do the lockdowns right. This of course also includes proper government response, such as testing, contact tracing enforcing isolation, having covid clinics, etc. Not the idiotic "see no evil, hear no evil, the virus will go away by itself" policy of the us federal government.
Here I should mention that you are also off topic. The cruise ship workers were subjected to much higher psychic stress than usual people. This is mostly due to the cruise companies irresponsible behavior during the pandemic.
Even if the full disease cycle was only two weeks, there's often more than one person in a household, and the time it takes to ensure all of them can cross-infect each-other, and go through the full disease cycle is much longer.
We absolutely don’t know enough to make generalizations about those countries.
I know many Vietnamese living in Vietnam. Beyond the much larger spread of previous coronaviruses, different genetics, climate and more, they tell me that their culture keeps these things quiet. The government plays a large role in this suppression.
There are whole years of investigation that need to take place before anyone can even potentially make positive statements about what happened.
I’m shocked on all sides about how everyone seems to “know” the truth. We have some ok leads, we’re far from answers.
I agree. I think genetics and the other factors you mentioned might have a major role. Also in the US and EU, PCR tests are done with over 40 amplification cycles, leading to massive amounts of false positives. There is no global standard for PCR and the WHO has even weighed in on these discrepancies.
A traveler to Afghanistan shows a city that has few mandates outside of the airport: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nculZ8xu1wc Life is pretty much normal there, because in low-income countries it has to. And when these people actually see and talk to each other about the situation, they can express contradicting ideas and not be locked into a spiral of fear.
Int he US, EU, Canada and Victoria, Australia, separating people from one another is having a strong group think effect where no one is seeing things outside of a a very limited on-line or very local bubble. We are looking at the world through a straw, and it's greatly distorting our view of what's actually happening.
It's worth remembering that normal life in Afghanistan includes toddlers freezing to death at refugee camps. It's one of the world's poorest countries, and has many problems that are worse than COVID.
Just pick and choose the countries that are doing well and match them to your favorite measure. Be sure to say the measure ‘has to be done right’ but don’t define what is right, so if it fails you can always claim it ‘wasn’t done right’.
Beware though, because the situation may change any minute, like in the mask societies of Japan and South Korea. They must have suddenly forgotten how to wear their masks.
"Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam have much less restricted societies right now "
Those are inherently 'rules based' societies though where government also has an incredible amount of power to intervene.
If the 'general rules' both administrative and social were enforced in the West, we'd probably have a revolution.
It was never about 'lock-downs' over there - it was 'all of the other things' they did.
They were way more interventially concientous than us: when you land in Taiwan, they physically check you in your home to make sure you're in quarantine. They give you masks. They follow up. The Koreans do mass contact tracing, they search your Facebook + Social Media. Those are things that Americans in particular would balk at.
Paradoxically - Korea and Japan have particularily high suicide rates and my 'unscientific hunch' is that the high degree of social structure and expectations are the driving cause. While they may yield compliant, conscientious people - those who do 'fall of the bandwagon' really do fall off.
> Those are inherently 'rules based' societies though where government also has an incredible amount of power to intervene.
Australia had a lockdown. The state I am in had a complete lockdown where our borders were even closed to other states in Australia. Melbourne had the longest, and toughest lockdown in the country. Since late August, the virus has been wiped clean from my state and there is no community transmission. This means that the lockdown was lifted, and businesses allowed to open as per normal except some slight contact tracing procedures in place. The story is fairly similar in rest of the country (except maybe Melbourne which had a second wave and needed another lockdown). While there is a small cluster in North Sydney, it is fairly small and hopefully contained. I go to work everyday, all businesses are open, and economy had one of the most minimal effects.
Australia isn't a very "rules-based" society either so a counter-example to consider.
A lengthy lockdown will obviously reduce the virus dramatically. Who is doubting that?
"If the 'general rules' both administrative and social were enforced in the West, we'd probably have a revolution."
Everywhere there was 'peak COVID' had lockdowns - but if the lockdown were as severe and controlled as Wuhan, or as consistentely interventional as Taiwan or Hong Kong, there would be revolts.
Much of that they did would be probably anti-constitutional and definitely challenged in courts by those who disagree.
If the police or medical authorities were going through facebook accounts for contract-tracing, there'd be a revolt, certainly in America, probably in Australia. The 'public health' issue is secondary, there are just enough people who'd consider that to be 'anti Constitutional' that it'd be a serious problem.
Politicians everywhere are testing the limits of what they can get away with, this is not a joke.
There are protests all over the Western world not being covered by the press because everyone is afraid the populism could get out of hand.
Case and point: Christmas. If this were any other time of year, the lockdown would have come sooner, but politicans were far too afraid, so in most places, they waited until just after. The UK had no choice to go before XMass.
- The lockdown in Melbourne was not dissimilar to China’s Wuhan lockdown.
- Police and Medical Authorities did go through facebook (publicly, not any kind of hacking) for contact tracing and policing of people breaking health orders.
- It was not anti-constitutional (because Australia has a different constitution) and Australia has specific laws that allow (in emergencies like pandemics) the Chief Health Officers to override existing laws.
- There were no revolts, in fact there is continued wide spread support for the state government in Victoria, and the federal government in Australia for their response.
There was one guy who revolted with some unrelated conspiracy stuff and got arrested in his house. A pregnant woman tried to start a party with friends that was flagrantly against the measures and was arrested.
Law and order problems still exist even in a lockdown and I think in Feb we'll see people push back against the oppressive atmosphere.
The Melbourne lockdown was as tight as anything in China and yes they did compulsory contact tracing including social media investigations.
We also have a phone app for contact tracing. The biggest issue with that is that it doesn't work, not privacy concerns.
Protests against it were widely covered here in Australia. There was little popular support for them, and the Premier of the state (think US Governer) is seeing his highest polling support ever.
Sure, I agree in the US there are groups that have been much more effective in exploiting fears of government than elsewhere. But the US is a pretty unique situation.
The more important question is how do you match response with effects.
2% of covid deaths are people under 40, there is an at least linear correlation between risk and age.
I value a day in my life much higher at my current age than I would serval decades in the future, and in general I think this is true.
The issue is that the people with the most risk have the least to lose, and those with the least risk have the most to lose.
Eventually you have to get to the calculus of how many months of bored teenagers is worth how many months of saved life for the elderly?
When it comes to me personally, the pandemic and response has taken away a not insignificant chunk of the prime of my life. How many days of life did I save for my part and was it worth it?
People tend to have this notion to cling to every second of extended life, that’s not necessarily right.
Life is risk, and everything you do changes the risk. People tend to want to take one extreme without matching their choices with values.
I think it's different for everyone. Myself, two decades ago, I was happier. I'm still happy now, but I was much more exuberant, in general, back then. The zest and passion of youth sort of stuff. I'd rather live through COVID now that I'm older, instead of back then.
If I were still in my 20s I'd be very upset over these conditions and how that will compound over the rest of my life. The compounding really, really matters for young people. They're being diminished. It's an extraordinary trolley problem as another poster stated.
My view: we're choosing to diminish youth to preserve the elderly. Maybe ok. Maybe not. Probably not; they're the future. I don't know what the balance should be—which way to swing the trolley switch. My judgement is that public debate is shallow, binary, and without nuance. The weakest and poorest suffer as a result.
I don't think there's any right or wrong answer here. But lots of people are getting hurt in different ways and in different durations.
It's also not entirely simple. My mother is over 65 and while at risk due to her age she now has to deal with the fact she can not see her grandchildren which are very important to her.
I life in Australia and had intended to visit the UK this year or have her come over, now she will not likely see her grandchildren until sometime into 2021, nearly 3 years since she last saw them.
She was also looking forward to seeing my sister with her young kids this Christmas, she lives in the mainland UK, and has had to give that up as well.
Whether or not people who frequent HN value human interact much is irrelevant for my mother she very much enjoys seeing her family and that's not happening this year and makes her quite sad.
The restrictions in the UK are to try and prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed. COVID is maxing out capacity which is having a knock on effect where normal treatments are having to be delayed. Eg cancer treatment for a young person. Even if young people aren't at risk directly from COVID as much as older people, they are at greater risk with health issues that affects all ages because of the delay in treatments.
But yeah I understand your point of view. It is frustrating all the same.
> "the pandemic and response has taken away a not insignificant chunk of the prime of my life."
Bits of your life which don't go your way are still lived, and still your life.
You may as well argue that sleep takes your life away, and that illness does, and that employment does, and nickel and dime your way down to defining "your life" as just the bits you choose, and then further slice them all down into "the bits which went exactly the way I wanted". Newsflash, it's /all/ your life.
> "Life is risk
risk includes things not turning out how you hope, do you say that risks which don't pan out are "taking away my life"?
So what would the solution be when 10 million people need hospital beds and there are only 1 million, most of which are taken up by people without covid
No one is accurately talking about the risks. The vast majority of people who have died have been over 60. There have been young people who died, yes. But young people die all the time of things that often kill very few: fungal infections, respiratory disease, bicycle wrecks. Now the narrative is "Long Covid" which comes from very limited case studies and papers that depend on web surveys and lots of other questionable research that falls flat once you start diving into the papers.
Meanwhile, all the things people are doing are about as effective as TSA Security Theater. The lockdowns simply do not work. We can see that in the numbers between California, South Dakota, Sweden and others. Every nation or municipality that takes a hard approach is no better off, and often much worse, than places that did substantially less. The masks are a placebo at this point and the numbers show they probably do next to nothing (except contribute to massive pollution, waste, shame and make us fearful of each other).
In 50 years, the only way I think historians will look back upon this ear is pure mass hysteria; global mass hysteria on a scale never seen before. This is not a time of honor and should never be returned to.
We don't really know this because almost nowhere is actually locking anything down. We have these feeble and unenforced "stay at home" orders which are full of loopholes and largely ignored. If you go out for a drive in your town today (against stay-at-home guidance), you'll see all manner of stores open, people out and about horsing around, even restaurants. We're hardly taking any precautions at all. We don't know if lockdowns work because we haven't actually tried it.
It's like the Simpsons quote, "We've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas!" [1]
A few places on earth like NZ and Australia actually did stay-at-home with far fewer loopholes, mandatory quarantining, contact tracing, and they're doing much better.
This is because it was reintroduced by returning Australians due to the rest of the worlds inability to contain it. Now we'll hopefully have some minor restrictions until we get on top of things again because you can effectively contact trace at these levels of transmission.
This doesn't prove that lockdowns don't work anymore than a car crash death proves that seat belts don't work.
This is nonsensical. Lockdowns aren't a binary system. The countries that did real lockdowns combined with testing, contact tracing and isolation are doing extremely well. Look at how China is doing today. Or Taiwan. Or New Zealand. Or Australia.
If lockdowns that aren't "real" (by the way, saying "real lockdowns" brings the no true Scotsman fallacy to mind) don't work to stop the virus, then why are >95% of the countries in the world doing them, since they still have all the negative side effects but without the benefit?
Because politicians are idiots. They think doing some lockdown-light with 50% of the boxes ticked from scientists recommendations will get 50% of the promised effect. And if they pick the right 50% of boxes, it'll also not inconvenience anyone important...
Even with your definition, my question stands: if stay-at-home orders aren't lockdowns and so don't stop the virus, why are >95% of the countries in the world doing them, since they still have all the negative side effects but without the benefit?
Pure mass hysteria on any matter these days is all thanks to the Like and Follower counter based reward system.
Over energetic, mindlessly ambitious, attention craving lunatics on the Left and Right get propped up and
dominate all discussion these days thanks to the counts.
Everyone else has to enter into Count accumulating arms race to even be allowed into the room to speak.
The counts enable the best panderers in society and validate everything they do and say.
About the only thing that has really solidly changed over the last several thousand years is the near eradication of warlike hunter-gatherers and human sacrifice/cannibal societies. Every other stupid human behavior (and enlightened human behavior) is more or less the same now as it has been as long as there’s been civilization.
Most of the obnoxious things people do are features of our biology, not some emergent effect of the blame target du jour.
I'm always a bit baffled that any increase "suicide during COVID" is supposedly something that can be neatly blamed on lockdown measures. Isn't it at least possible that people could be committing suicide due to reasons that are directly causally connected to COVID - whether that is fear of illness/death, a sense of the world ending, death/serious illness of a close relative or friend and/or having been sick with COVID themselves?
The last possibility seems particularly unnerving given how many people have had COVID and the fact that there do seem to be a good number of 'long-haulers' (some of whom report psychological effects).
I don't know if there's a good way of quantifying this, but the idea that every suicide during COVID is 100% casually connected to lockdown measures (or the knock-on consequences of lockdown, such as job losses) seems like an article of faith.
Do you really need evidence for this? 99% of the people I know are really struggling with the lockdown measures (although most of them accept they are neccesary). And the vast majority of those are due to lonliness. Only a few are actually scared of covid.
99%? We move in very different circles. A significant number of people that I know are doing pretty well. Working from home, having to travel less, fewer social commitments, and more time to spend on movies, reading, etc... are all things that appeal to some people.
I've had more than one conversation that eventually has somebody saying they feel like an asshole for saying so (because they know people are hurting), but they like the new normal.
It's been about 9 months of heavy restrictions. The few movies you maybe wanted to watch, you've watched them months ago. Even the most pro-lockdown people I knew are getting sick of lockdowns and breaking the rules.
Do you not need evidence? Anecdata that results in wrong conclusions could cost people's lives...
For instance, what if lack of grief counseling after losing a loved one is a leading cause? We'd want to make sure people that need it can get the counseling, rather then just blame it on lock down.
Anecdotally, i always thought i was a resilient person but unemployment is really getting to me. i finished my phd last December, have done excellent work published really good journals in my field (and publicly well known) but i couldn't stand the insane hours in academia. my advisor took out patents on my first author work but i did't argue for the sake of my degree. I have no network because i just sat in my office and worked daily...didn't make many friends in grad school...just worked. i'm never going back to academia; rent seeking vampires. the worst part is my advisor discouraged me from looking for internships over the summer. kicked me to the curb after all of that work.
now, I send out applications daily, work on 'projects', and grind leetcode. It's so hard to get an interview without any network. I'm a very disciplined person, gym in the morning, eat breakfast in the office and work until my goals for the day are met. moving back home, unemployment, and no gym removed those structures from my life. I run a lot now days but the gym was my social life. my phd involved a lot of coding, hpc work, and 'data science', i don't understand why i can't get past recruiters. it sucks being 30, doing a difficult thing, and now being broke and unemployable. my undergrad students i taught have found jobs...i don't understand.
in the interviews i've gotten, it seems like if i make one little mistake, i'm out or ghosted. i wrote and app for a well-known start-up in my area and then they ghosted me. i don't get this market.
i'm starting to get really scared; these past two weeks i've sat in my room silently screaming and crying...I've never done that in my life. i run by some cliffs on a hillside and have really started to wonder...because i'm not afraid. i just don't want my family to have to go through it....creeping thoughts of uselessness, wasted life, and being a burden.
sorry it's fragmented and don't worry i'm not going to do anything drastic...i still want to learn to paraglide and get to the top of denali...i can't go through life without doing those.
..i think my going to find some open source projects to contribute to...i think that might be a good way of doing things.
anyway a view from the other-side. sorry for the vent...i don't have anyone to talk to.
This might be uncalled for, but from your comment it seems like you could really use some input.
IMHO it isn't qualifications you're lacking, but a method for "working smart" and proving you can adapt to the industry on top of being able to work hard; as you've surely noticed, the latter is seldom enough. You "don't get this market" probably because you haven't understood what the companies you're applying to are looking for, and you haven't understood what they're looking for likely because you need to recalibrate your understanding of value delivery and expectations in the industry as opposed to academia.
You can contact me (info in bio) in case you want me to look at your CV, want to do a mock job interview or want other sort of feedback.
That sounds understandably very painful. I have some sympathy for what you're going through. My own advisor was an asshole. He referred me to an internship, and then after I interviewed and they were ready to hire me, he changed his mind and threatened to kick me out if I took said internship.
You will find a job eventually. It's probably just difficult to get your foot in the door because everyone is looking for industry experience. That first job is the hardest, but the next one after that will be much easier to find, believe me.
My advice would be to persist. If you're having dark thoughts, you may want to consider antidepressants. They helped me when I was down. I can vouch for escitalopram/lexapro. I would at the very least suggest avoiding that hillside if it's a trigger for suicidal ideation. Pick a safer route for the time being.
Keep applying. Maybe settle for a less amazing job for the time being, just to pay the bills. Once you have a job, it will be much easier to get another job. You'll be in a better position to negotiate. You can settle for an OK job, and keep looking for your ideal job while not having to worry about making rent.
If you want someone to talk to, I can be that person. I wish you the best, and as cliche as it sounds, hang in there!
I can't begin to imagine how you feel, but stick to it and you'll get some responses. It's not an easy time to find a job, so it's likely nothing to do with you.
> i'm never going back to academia; rent seeking vampires.
That they are. Maybe not rent-seeking, but they definitely hustle hard to build a very wide pyramid and take full advantage.
> my advisor discouraged me from looking for internships over the summer. kicked me to the curb
Ouch. The academy is f*ed up like that, and while I'm not surprised by your story, you certainly have my sympathy.
> my phd involved a lot of coding, hpc work, and 'data science', i don't understand why i can't get past recruiters
I think you probably mean HR, but if there's a single party in the hiring process most likely to impose dumb filters, you're right, that's them. You've likely heard everything I'm about to say, but overcommunication is cheap, while undercommunication is expensive, so I'll say it anyway.
The trick, of course, is figuring out which filters you're getting caught in. For academics looking to transition to industry, the usual problem is focusing on academic achievements too much, rather than focusing on programming skills too little. Trying to convince industry to positively value your prestigious publications is a hopeless task at the entry level (research labs excluded, of course, but those have a very high bar). You might even have to hide the academics entirely (PhD -> Research Programming). Another common problem is academics trying to sell their PhD as project management or engineering management to bypass entry level. PhDs are often exactly that, but industry never sees it that way, so don't try it unless you're getting tons of bites already.
Here's the problem: everyone in industry knows (or has heard of) a PhD who always drags their feet on engineering work and instead chases novel tangents that don't add value to the actual product, unless management actively identifies this and heads it off. From an engineer's perspective, or an engineering management perspective, that person is deadweight at best and toxic at worst. You need to avoid being associated with this at all costs. 100% laser focusing on your engineering qualifications (as opposed to academic qualifications) is a start; burying the academics entirely is the extreme response.
Never mention the specific problems with your PI in the interviews, just keep it general: the work/life balance and comp packages offered by academia are increasingly holding you back from (401k / homeownership / kids / paragliding & mountain climbing) and after tolerating it for 6-8 years you're ready for a change.
Needless to say, don't let anyone in the hiring process see stream-of-conscious style writing. Complete sentences, proper capitalization, spelling, and proof-reading are important signals.
Explicitly mentioning willingness to relocate can help, even if you've already theoretically ticked a box somewhere.
> i wrote and app for a well-known start-up in my area and then they ghosted me.
Hiring is astonishingly dysfunctional and rejections frequently happen for a mind-boggling array of dumb reasons that reflect purely on the company. This is far more true for industry than for grantsmanship, where people usually at least read your proposal and rationalize their choices. There's too much noise to back-propagate into your self-confidence. This is just a matter of figuring out the filters and rolling the dice enough to overcome the intrinsic failure rate.
If an application process is laborious enough that it's hindering you from rolling the dice enough (writing an app might fall into this category), drop it and give them that feedback.
> i just don't want my family to have to go through it....
Times are hard, transitions are tough, and you've just spent 6 years getting your blood sucked by a vampiric system that didn't even let you build up a safety buffer. There's no shame in accepting their support.
> creeping thoughts of uselessness, wasted life
Walking away from a research career tends to leave those, especially when people find that PhDs have a negative value on the entry-level job market. The news gets much better past entry-level, though. Both tech and communication skills translate, and people will believe it when they see it, which works against you now but in short order it will work in your favor. With the prestige of a PhD and the communications skills it develops, you will be the good foot your team puts forward, and ten years down the road, this fact and the letters after your name will give you a serious leg up if you want to keep climbing the ladder.
> ..i think my going to find some open source projects to contribute to...i think that might be a good way of doing things.
Probably not. I think your time is better spent trying to crack the HR filter code, working on self-presentation, and playing the numbers game. I'm missing a lot of information and it's ultimately your call, but self-doubts of the "If I just had one more resume line item" variety are vampiric in the same way that academia is: they'll suck your energy into efforts that nobody else will reward you for and there will always be one more thing to do.
If you're going to do projects, at least keep them minimum-viable and focus on the most in-demand search terms you don't yet have on your resume. My guess is you've maxed your "legit coding" stat and need to focus elsewhere.
The underlying assumption here, that there are some areas that decided to lockdown and others that didn't, and each had different pros and cons, seems wildly inaccurate.
The reality is that almost everywhere in the world did a lockdown of some kind, but in some areas it was effective and in other areas it was not; and, while everyone has suffered consequences of some kind, the consequences suffered by the latter group exceed those of the former by a wide and obvious margin.
> but I do implore people to keep in mind when deciding on policy the law of unintended consequences
This is one of those things that feels easy with the benefit of hindsight, but it's extraordinarily difficult to do up front.
Specifically: There are no modern studies that could quantify the negative externalities of mass quarantine on the mental health of a population. Obviously isolation will be detrimental to many, but where would you even begin to put a number on it?
Even more difficult, there are counterbalancing factors to mass quarantine such as a reduction in traffic fatalities. This one could maybe be estimated up front because we do have some statistics and models around traffic deaths.
Coronavirus is a unique situation because the negative effects are very non-linear. The fatality rate will skyrocket if/when hospital capacity is overwhelmed. Many policy decisions have been made in order to avoid those non-linear scenarios, which can look like overkill if you only consider them in the context of having avoided those scenarios.
But the real problems come from the political maneuvering that this opens up. Once you open the door to unmeasurable or unpredictable possible downsides of a policy, you will be flooded with "think of the children" type appeals that use fear of "what if" scenarios to grind progress to a halt. At scale, there is no such thing as a possible that doesn't have downsides to someone, somewhere. Trying to mitigate any and every downside is impossible.
> I've been shocked and saddened at the unwillingness of pro-lock-down people to consider the unintended consequences
Frankly, I think the average person doesn't fall into all out "anti-mask" or "pro-lockdown" categories, despite what you see on the news. We only hear about these extremist positions because the extremist voices tend to be the loudest. When considering one's own position, it's tempting to only look at the most extreme examples from the "other side" because they're the easiest to dismiss. In reality, the vast majority of the population is firmly in the middle. The average person doesn't like the idea of extreme lockdowns any more than they like the idea of a total laissez faire approach. We just don't hear about the middle ground on the news or social media because it's boring.
One aspect is that there were models trying to calculate those other things like downsides. Both guesses on suicides and domestic violence going up, people not going to doctor. But that does not matter, because people will do the rhetorical point anyway. In most context, people who bring up suicide did not even tried to find whether those guesses exists.
It is almost end of year, we have actual suicides statistics available. Suicides went slightly up, but not by much and they went slightly up in preceding years too. More people died from covid. Our best estimates say that if hospitals would get overfulled, in those places mortality would be even higher.
But that does not matter for "what about" political point. Because that one is not motivated by attempt to find best policy, it is motivated by wanting the other side to be wrong.
>I know a number of people that have committed suicide during the lock downs.
Really? Because the increase in suicides is quite small (8% is the last statistic I saw) and suicides in general are quite rare (~13 per 100,000 people).
Yes I won't mention any details out of respect for privacy, but two former friends/co-workers, one person I was in the military with 15 years ago, as well as one family member.
It's obviously not only lock downs that have caused this, but they certainly added to it. My close friend had his marriage explode and turn horribly nasty. She took the kids and he ended up alone in a studio apartment for months, and then killed himself. His marriage was obviously not great before but they were making it work. Being stuck in the house together all the time was too much.
I'm guessing data on suicides due to lockdowns is as problematic as deaths due to covid because these are typically complex equations, but it would be interesting to see a study. In my small non-representative case study, suicides are up >200% from average. It's normally 1 every other year or so, except 2018 when there were 2 :'(
at the risk of sounding inconsiderate(your friends should have been able of receiving proper care) the lockdowns have imposed a mental toll on everyone, in my opinion amplified by societies taboo in mental care.
I just hope everyone else is capable of finding comfort or finding a group which gives comfort to each other.
She can't legaly take kids away from him, he has right to demand 50% custody. In cases where she allege violence, it can be pretty difficult to make courts believe that and approve zero contact.
Here in Washington state, I assure you while you might be able to demand, there are still rules on the books that make a 50/50 split not automatic. Especially if you happen to live in the eastern, more conservative part of the state, the judges here are more sympathetic to "traditional" family values and so are still very much aware of those guidelines. I am not a lawyer, consult a lawyer, but having been through this myself within the past few years, I know very much that even something that should be as obvious as a 50/50 split is not obvious in the eyes of the law.
Or said another way - even if he has the legal right, that doesn't mean he necessarily has the budget to fight it. Unfortunately, I found that Might Makes Right is a real thing in family law.
This same general conversation came up here on HN about a year ago - I recall vividly several posters from other states in the east / south US who made the same observations I did, IE: that their states had similar laws on the books still giving favor to a "traditional" child care giver, IE: a female.
We passed laws pertaining to homosexual marriage a while ago here in WA and had "domestic partnership" laws before that. I have asked many lawyers since then how the courts would view a divorce situation between two men or two women as in light of these laws that continue to give favor to a "mom". I've yet to get a straight answer, yet somehow the courts are presumably processing divorces for marriages of all types.
That is literally not true. In cases where male parent files for custody, he is very likely to get it. As in, in those cases there is slight statistic bias toward male (it is slight but still exist).
Not to be insensitive, but I wonder if you are drawn to suicidal people or something? I have a fairly large social network and literally no one has committed suicide in it as far as I know(or even died for that matter). I know of two people who have attempted it, and I'm sure more have attempted or even just had suicidal thoughts, but no one has actually done it.
Why? There's nothing wrong with being drawn to people with certain dispositions. And I'm not proud (or whatever) of not having anyone in my social circle who has committed suicide. Just like I wouldn't be proud if none of my friends had Parkinsons.
One should look at disability adjusted life years. A 30 year old committing suicide objectively costs far more human life than a 95 year old dying of Covid-19. Also, suicide and other deaths of despair are far more socially costly than Covid-19 deaths of people that were going to die soon of something else anyhow.
> "A 30 year old committing suicide objectively costs far more human life than a 95 year old dying of Covid-19."
Only if you assume the 30 year old lives to be 95 and is not going to commit suicide age 31 from a different life stressor event. Unless they are actively helped, taking away one trigger event at one point in their life is not the same as them being saved from suicide until age 95.
> "also, suicide and other deaths of despair are far more socially costly"
and /more fixable/. Hopeless -> suicide is a pattern that cognitive behavioural therapy can work on. It shouldn't be the case that society has such poor mental health support that "their life fell apart which lead to their suicide" leads to this kind of life or death trade of "who should die to prevent their life falling apart?" instead of "help with the mental health part so they can survive their life falling apart".
Most of the Covid deaths are not people that were going to die soon anyway. The last data I saw said an average of more than 10 years of expected life lost.
It has been a right-wing deception that they were going to die anyway because they had pre-existing conditions, but most of those pre-existing conditions are things that are only slow killers if at all.
> The last data I saw said an average of more than 10 years of expected life lost.
That isn't just data, it's data plus a set of assumptions. Won't you please further this discussion and share it instead of making vague allegations about right-wing conspiracies?
It's well known that Covid-19 is by wildly disproportionately more lethal as age increases[1] and it's also well known that older people on average have less life left than younger people.
Also please note that deaths of despair is a broader category than suicide[2]. Someone who drinks himself to death isn't counted as a suicide, even though it's a person taking action that ends his own life earlier than it otherwise would. Alcohol consumption has increased markedly during the pandemic[3].
Caring about 2nd and higher order effects isn't a right-wing conspiracy theory, it's just a sensible, intelligent, and compassionate thing to do. We should expect better than kindergarten tier reasoning from our leadership.
Yes, the lethality goes up sharply with age. That doesn't mean people were near death when they got Covid. If the death rate wasn't related to age you would see an average of 40 years of life lost.
Why do you assume that suicides are biased toward young healthy people?
Young healthy people were in best position to not be isolated even in lockdown, unlike unhealthy people and old people who wont just play computer games for company.
The problem with tradeoffs related to COVID restrictions is that we can much more easily quantify one side of the trade off than the other. The Trolley problem at least usually stipulates the consequences of each choice.
The second and third order consequences of COVID restrictions are extremely difficult to quantify especially during the crisis. So we are forced to make decisions about trade offs without knowing nearly the full nature of the trade.
Well, the insane thing to me here, is exactly that. Every country immediately jumped onto the lockdown bandwagon, presumably because of peer-pressure, to avoid being shamed. We jumped into this and sacrificed fundamental freedoms without being able to quantify what the short, medium and long-term consequences of a lockdown would be, or how long we'd need to stay into lockdown. I think it's quite possible that the medicine could be worse than the disease, but that discussion hasn't even been had.
> "Every country immediately jumped onto the lockdown bandwagon"
Sweden had no lockdown; The Lancet editor, a member of SAGE and the UK's former Health Secretary all said the UK lockdown was late and cost many lives for being late. Italy locked down on 9th March, Singapore on 7th April, Kuwait on 10th May, Bhutan on 11th August. It's not every country, it wasn't all at the same time, and it definitely wasn't immediate - e.g. within a few days of Wuhan's first lockdown on 23rd January.
> "presumably because of peer-pressure, to avoid being shamed."
Presumably because of a global disease pandemic.
> "I think it's quite possible that the medicine could be worse than the disease, but that discussion hasn't even been had."
It's been had a lot, months and months of it. Committees of medics, researchers, policy advisors, economists, politicians, civil servants, have debated it, Twitter threads have argued it, newspapers have written about it, it's being discussed right here in this thread on HN.
Good because this is not a new problem [0], it's merely exacerbated by the pandemic.
Hopefully this finally gets the recognition it deserves and needs instead of being framed solely as a side-effect of the lock-downs.
Sadly mental health is still a topic that's mostly stigmatized in many places along the lines of "only weak minded people struggle with depression", while resources and institutions to deal with it have had their budgets cut, and been closed down, for decades.
It wasn't always that way. Back in the day unless you said something totally out there and tone deaf (like something beyond the bounds of any commonly known ideology and on a highly sensitive topic) you didn't have much to worry about.
There will always be nut jobs willing to go as far as to assassinate people they disagree with. The point is that "just" cancelling people you disagree with used to not be mainstream or common.
Imagine it's 2005 and Lebron says something unflammatory like "McVeigh had the right idea" or something. It would be in the sports news for one evening. Everyone would be like "ok weirdo". Some sports commentator would dredge it up in 2008 as a punchline to a joke and that would be it. The same thing in 2020 and someone would write a manifesto about how he's Literally Hitler(TM). There would be 50-50 odds a major outlet would publish that manifesto. The league would bench him for a substantial time. ESPN would distance themselves. He'd lose promotion deals. It would seriously negatively impact his career despite having exactly zero bearing on his ability to play basketball, the thing he's paid to do.
Edit: Better, non-hypothetical examples:
Mel Gibson had to drunkenly spout hateful things about people who are important in his industry to get kicked out of it. These days you don't even have to offend people relevant to you to get that kind of treatment.
Look at the flak that 2000s rappers caught for song lyrics that objectified women and glorified street violence. Now imagine what that kind of backlash would look like today. Probably much bigger.
That's exactly my point. It's completely wacky and inflammatory and would go over like a lead baloon then and now but the repercussions would be worse now.
I like how you say "look this happens all the time today" and yet you have failed to provide a single actual example in the last 5 years of the thing you're so sure is happening.
The point is, even if there weren't lockdowns, the psychological toll of the virus would be huge. Plenty of people would self-isolate anyway out of justified fear of the virus. In fact, being surrounded by people who recklessly disregard risk is even more damaging for those who are cautious. It is difficult to separate the cost of specific lockdowns from the overall mental toll of living through a pandemic.
You are making an appeal to your personal incredulity. Let me assure you, we’ve definitely considered the unintended consequences and it’s a bit of a misnomer because we already knew this would happen. Human psychology is not new. It’s sad and shitty. There is no alternative that isn’t shittier or we would be advocating for it. Do you have an alternative?
I have the opposite pov. The anti-lockdown people always seem to argue that without lockdown there would be zero economic consequences. They argue in some fantasy alternate timeline where everyone under 60 just goes about their business as usual. That's not what would happen. People would still avoid going out. Companies would still enforce work from home, etc. Hospitals would likely be full so when you went to get route medical treatment you'd run into a wall and quickly learn to take COVID seriously. It's not clear at all that the results wouldn't have all the same economic consequences on top of way more death
No need to pretend there is some fantasy alternate timeline. There are several states that never had a lockdown[1] and even more that had less strict stay-at-home orders. Compare the COVID-19 numbers (ICU headroom in particular) from this year[2] for states with lockdowns vs. states with no lockdown. Also check out the current unemployment rates for each state.[3] Thee west coast faired no better than the midwest on several metrics.
This is a back-of-the-napkin analysis to be sure, but it certainly suggests the anti-lockdown folks at least have a valid point that should be listened to in good faith.
If you expect society to act responsibly whether or not the government mandates a lockdown, then isn't a government mandated lockdown unnecessary? And if so, isn't unnecessary government regulation strictly worse for the economy?
We had a 5% decline in suicide this year in Sydney. Although it wasn’t a very hard or long lockdown. The hypothesis is that increased welfare payments may be the reason but personally I believe the slow down/pause to what was a hectic pace of life, and being at home with family more contributed.
> This is heartbreaking, and by no means anomalous. I know a number of people that have committed suicide during the lock downs.
Do you have any basis for that assertion?
I've seen that argument being made since lockdowns started to be declared but there is never a single shred of data or source or evidence substantiating any of those claims.
I note that 0.1%, or about 350,000 people) of the US population has died of COVID19. (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/) Suicides have been increasing in the US over recent decades and suicides are under-reported, but the annual suicide rate has been about an order of magnitude less than COVID19 deaths.
Large quotes follow:
"As many countries face new stay-at-home restrictions to curb the spread of covid-19, there are concerns that rates of suicide may increase—or have already increased.12 Several factors underpin these concerns, including a deterioration in population mental health,3 a higher prevalence of reported thoughts and behaviours of self-harmamong people with covid-19,4 problems accessing mental health services,4 and evidence suggesting that previous epidemics such as SARS (2003) were associated with a rise in deaths by suicide.5
"Widely reported studies modelling the effect of the covid-19 pandemic on suicide rates predicted increases ranging from 1% to 145%,6 largely reflecting variation in underlying assumptions. Particular emphasis has been given to the effect of the pandemic on children and young people. Numerous surveys have highlighted that their mental health has been disproportionately affected, relative to older adults,37 and some suggest an increase in suicidal thoughts and self-harm.8
"Supposition, however, is no replacement for evidence. Timely data on rates of suicide are vital, and for some months we have been tracking and reviewing relevant studies for a living systematic review.6 The first version in June found no robust epidemiological studies with suicide as an outcome, but several studies reporting suicide trends have emerged more recently. Overall, the literature on the effect of covid-19 on suicide should be interpreted with caution. Most of the available publications are preprints, letters (neither is peer reviewed),91011 or commentaries using news reports of deaths by suicide as the data source.12
"Nevertheless, a reasonably consistent picture is beginning to emerge from high income countries. Reports suggest either no rise in suicide rates (Massachusetts, USA11; Victoria, Australia13; England14) or a fall (Japan,9 Norway15) in the early months of the pandemic. The picture is much less clear in low income countries, where the safety nets available in better resourced settings may be lacking. News reports of police data from Nepal suggest a rise in suicides,12 whereas an analysis of data from Peru suggests the opposite.10
"Any change in the risk of suicide associated with covid-19 is likely to be dynamic. The 20% decrease in Japan early in the pandemic seemed to reverse in August, when a 7.7% rise was reported.9 Evidence from previous epidemics suggests a short term decrease in suicide can occur initially—possibly linked to a “honeymoon period” or “pulling together” phenomenon.5 Trends in certain groups may be hidden when looking at overall rates, and the National Child Mortality Database has identified a concerning signal that deaths by suicide among under 18s may have increased during the first phase of lockdown in the UK.16"
"“Based on preliminary data, Oregon has not seen an increase in the number of suicides for the first nine months of 2020 when compared to the same time period in 2019,” Oregon Health Authority communications officer wrote Aria Seligmann in an email.
"The monthly suicide surveillance updates published by the Oregon agency (https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/PREVENTIONWELLNESS/SAFELIVING/...) show the frequency of suicide-related visits to hospital emergency rooms and urgent care centers decreased in the first and second quarters of 2020. For the third quarter of this year, suicide-related visits were similar to 2019. Suicide-related calls in 2020 to the Oregon Poison Center are coming in at a similar pace to last year, too.
"Likewise, the Washington State Department of Health and the biggest local health department in the state reported no discernible upward trend, maybe even a slight decrease in suicide deaths, in the first three quarters of 2020.
"As of a November tally, there were 861 suicides statewide in the first three quarters of 2020, compared to 940 suicides in the same period of 2019. A Washington DOH spokesperson cautioned that there are delays in the state’s death data collection, so the preliminary tally of suicide deaths will probably be higher when finalized — and therefore track closely with the pre-pandemic trend."
The data is, largely, not available, and suicide prevention is a very important aspect of the current healthcare situation, but as it appears now, COVID19 is a much greater health threat than pandemic-response-related suicides.
I do not, just anecdata, so take my declaration as opinion extrapolated from lived experience. I've seen a few interesting links but haven't studied them yet. I'll add a note to the post.
> During that 20-year period, the total suicide rate in the United States increased 35% from 10.5 per 100,000 in 1999 to 14.2 per 100,000 in 2018.
It seems that suicide rates in the us have been constantly increasing for the past two decades, and there is no break in the trend during the past year.
The past two decades coincide with the increase in violent military action overseas. It's too bad that those who have made these horrible decisions don't face the consequences of their greed. They leave that to the enlisted.
I think more sadly, this strange "mental health" defence has been used to justify the needless deaths of 100,000s of people from COVID.
There are orders of magnitude differences in the fatality rates of full lockdown mental health issues and zero lock down COVID deaths, it's not a hard decision at all. Compare Wuhan and New York WAY less death in Wuhan, with a much harsher authoritarian style lockdown (maximum mental duress you'd think).
Or Melbourne Australia with a very strict lockdown compared with pick any major American city you like. Major difference in death rates.
Edit: The trolley problem is really easy if one option kills 10,000 people and the other one kills 5... that's kind of difference we are talking about.
Popular tourist destinations that had open boarder policies might have restricted them considerably. It is not uncommon that cruise personnel do not have a passport with rights to go into the country where they are docked.
Many also plan on the cruise ship to return them home, and don't have funds for a flight home from mid-trip, even if they would be given right-of-passage. Some rent out their homes while they expect to be away working.
Nah, this is a bunch of crap. I worked on a carnival ship until the pandemic and I don't know where you pulled this answer out of, but it plain old wrong.
The reason they can't leave is simply the American authorities won't let them leave the ship in order to prevent them from staying in the U.S and potentially finding a way to get a job there (legal or illegal). There wasn't a person on board who couldn't leave the ship because of documentation in normal circumstances, but with the virus happening, Carnival shit their pants and were blocked from having anyone leave for the aforementioned reason.
Which proves once more that the governments do not really give a flying fuck about people and are willing to keep them in jail like conditions without those people committing any offence.
I believe that the US citizens who working on board could leave, it's the NON-US citizens that the US didn't give a shit about. Hell, keeping the crew onboard meant that the crew will spend their money onboard for necessities like water, cigarettes, laundry and drinks, so that they could make a bank out of bad situation.
> I am strangely reminded of the airline flight that sat parked on the airport (at Chicago?) ramp, full of passengers, for over 24 hours years ago.
What was that? Why on earth would an airline do that? Surely the cost in the tied-up-aircraft alone would be astronomical? How did they get food and water to the flight but were unable to unboard people?
But I swear the incident I remember was much longer than that, about 24 hours. I think it was Chicago and I think it was United. The plane landed during a snowstorm, but all the airline's gates were in use, so the pilot parked on the ramp and waited. The passengers could see the terminal, with open gates, but the pilot/airline wouldn't use them and wouldn't let passengers off where the plane was due to the storm. Eventually a passenger managed to contact the airline president, who somehow resolved the situation.
They didn't have food or water, and the restrooms' holding tanks were overflowing.
"Passengers were not allowed to leave the airplane because the Goose Bay Airport did not have a customs officer on duty during the overnight hours. Saturday bled into Sunday, and still the flight remained grounded."
Somewhat, especially since 2009 (https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna34510274) when the regulations changed to force airlines to return to a gate after waiting for takeoff for three hours.
Not surprised at all. Worked in this industry out of college and couldn’t get out fast enough. It’s such a surreal environment, you know the toxicity that exists at every level but most people seem to be gleefully ignorant. Pretty beaches, drink packages, tons of food, don’t rock the boat just enjoy the ride like everyone else...
It's disgusting. And it is right there for the passengers to see if only they would be willing to admit the people serving them are almost slaves. I went on one cruise in my life, saw what others did not, and will never do something like it again. People shouldn't suffer for other's pleasure.
Its high time for people to see that many extroverts have extreme social and separation anxiety problems, that many extroverts and the rest of society projects onto everyone else exclusively.
I've been surprised that there hasn't been any societal "aha" moment about how awful the lives of misfit loners can be. Still the same old "get out there / be yourself" ideology... even as people who've never been isolated begin experience how bad it can be, there somehow still remains the belief that misfit loners would choose that over the obviously super easy socializing/popularity games that humans play.
The article talks about the fact that the company did all they could for guests, but for staff, not so much..
Is that a COVID thing or is that par for the course with cruise ship companies?
I had an uncle who worked for years painting cruise ships (back in the 80s/90s mind you), and he had all kinds of stories about how the blue-collar staff on cruise ships were treated like shit, both by the company and by "management" on the ship itself.
To be honest I'm not sure I believed half his stories even as a kid, but I had no one else to ask. =)
Let me guess, your uncle is South American? 3rd world country?
Most of the blue collar workers are indeed treated almost slave-like tbh, I mean you are free to leave, but you will pay your own ticket and stay at the hotel and you will be escorted by a literal bodyguard the whole time to ensure you won't stay in the U.S.
If you obey management and don't get to anyone's bad side, you are allowed to stay and the staying part is actually the shitty one. Almost all of them have no choice though, so they have to sacrifice their mental and physical health, as well as their pride.
I was personally technically an officer on the ship so we get a bit better treatment, such as a housekeeper and we have our uniforms cleaned and ironed. Still, the hours even for us happened to be hell, sometimes on the embarkation days (when guests board the ship) it would go up to 13-14 hours.
The blue collar workers, especially in housekeeping normally worked around that 12 hours a day mark, regularly, for 7-9 months onboard.
The article mentions 8-10 hours, but that is an exception, not a norm.
All in all, CCL likes to aim for a 10/10 treatment for the guests and I guess they consistently hit 8/10 with their core customers. Crew however, a solid 3/10 max.
> Let me guess, your uncle is South American? 3rd world country?
No he's a white guy from Canada but he lived in Argentina for years.. and he was often, according to him, the only white guy on the paint crew. So you're basically correct..
They painted the engine rooms, and even the outside of the boat, during the actual cruises.. He told me once a story about doing the work "in international waters" so they could avoid taxes or something but that always seemed fishy (no pun intended).
He wasn't exactly an accountant so I suspect perhaps he thought that was true?
No, he was right. Cruise lines use the international waters to do shit like casino riggings, involuntary and shady gratuities practices and a bunch of other things.
You are, but it's way too far from enough. The onboard crew department that is part of the HR tried to organize things weekly for the crew, however most of the time you can't make it as you will be working.
A bit more than 3 months, but shit hit the fan even before the official date on which you couldn't leave. Being part of one of the central services on board a ship and dealing with guests and crew alike, there were major signs of incoming instability for 2-3 weeks before that. A LOT of shit never made it to the public or the CDC but was known internally. Hell, I could even go full Snowden and reveal the shit they did.
I would absolutely talk to a lawyer about whether any activity you witnessed might be criminal conduct for which an NDA would be unenforceable. You may very well save lives.
Carnival has large IT departments monitoring social media, so I will be on their radar here, but I can confirm that there was a lawsuit someone came in touch with me to be on.
Message to the carnival guys monitoring this: Hey guys, I am not coming back, you can't do shit about this, this isn't Facebook. I know you know who I am already, I just don't care.
Love the sentiment, but if you really want to stick it to them, keep your powder dry and coordinate with a legal team about what you should post. Posting too much here could weaken your case if you have one, and justice deserves to be served.
(Obligatory: Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
lolmao, medical treatement for crew onboard is a whole book in itself...
For the corona crisis, everything was done as basic and cost-saving as possible.
Without the corona situation, god forbid you get fucking sick on the ship. They feed you up with some basic 2 pills they give to whoever is sick of anything. As far as I could notice, those were some stimulants with the end goal to have you back on duty as soon as possible.
Even if you get sick, like legitimately sick and get treated, you end up with a mafia-style talk with your manager about "your recent performance". If you keep yourself off the sick train for the next months, you will get a pat on the back and a good review, where the 'recent performances' one from previously seemingly never happened.
Truly disgusting practices.
This has to do with the fact that “high seas” are not legally under any jurisdiction, right?
Cruise ship business was being slowly dragged¹ into the public eye as of last year… and then COVID hit. I imagine things must have gotten only worse in the general chaos of the pandemic.
Not really a high-seas problem, onboard a ship the regulations of the flag country apply. However, flag countries are picked to be very lax in both laws and their enforcement.
E.g. you will not find any carribean cruise ship from the big lines that is under a US flag.
The ships get the flags of small island-countries, where there are almost no laws protecting the crew and only loosely regulated laws about things like gambling, taxes and so on, things these companies misuse to garner profits.
I believe there are 0 US flagged ships that are part of the cruise industry that in the U.S.
Exactly, high seas and maritime law means you’re under the jurisdiction of the flag country (if you have one), and US law is very lax in what cruise lines have to report when it happens outside US jurisdiction.
According to WaPo’s report last year, the most commonly alleged crime is sexual assault (with a third of the victims being minors), and it is not required to be reported. Considering passengers have to put up with that, I struggle to imagine what many crew members have to deal with.
For a truly eye opening read about how abysmal conditions are for crews at sea, how slavery still is very very real today at sea, and how most fish is caught illegally by crews of slaves, I highly recommend reading The Outlaw Ocean by Ian Urbina. It’s very sobering and after reading it, I’m absolutely not surprised that cruise lines get away with treating their staff like they did.
People love to blame the President or their Governor or whatever, but the reality is that American culture made COVID much worse than it needed to be.
In general I see zero evidence that Americans at large would’ve followed a “proper lockdown”, by any definition. If you look at travel rates for each American airport this holiday season it’s pretty much confirmed. A company called StreetLight data put it at about 5% to 20% less.
If anyone has data suggesting otherwise please, by all means, reply and let’s see.
While I don't entirely disagree with your premise...
You've cherry-picked specifically the numbers for "vehicle travel" which isn't even defined but is differentiated even by that article from air travel -- I'd read that as people driving in their own cars. Which is still concerning, but perhaps less so. Some places have even actively encouraged people w/ cars to get out on a drive as a safe way to get out of the house during lockdowns while minimizing social contacts.
Even your link calls out that the drop in air travel this year was far greater. A quick google turns up some estimates that air travel generally accounts for more than half of normal Thanksgiving travel[1], and that there was ~%50 reduction in air travel this year[2]. So that seems like closer to a 30-40% overall reduction -- still not great, but nothing like 5%.
Looking at total air travel is meaningless because a huge amount is for business - I use holiday travel as an example because it is the most discretionary.
My point is that air travel (along with vehicular) was highest during this thanksgiving despite Covid being the worse during this thanksgiving and people having a good understanding of the risk. This is also shown in your link.
If people are traveling at such numbers (again thanksgiving was highest at any point between now and last March) given what we know now, there’s no way they would follow a lockdown when the effect is unknown like a hypothetical lockdown being done last February.
There’s just no evidence that Americans would’ve obeyed a lockdown at the levels necessary to stop spread.
Like I said, I'm not disagreeing with your premise... but you presented the numbers as something other than they actually were. And I agree that there was way more travel than was necessary.
But those numbers aren't about total air travel, they're about air travel at the holiday at that highest point since March was _still_ a 50% reduction (which is pretty minimally impacted by business travel, so not sure why you're bringing that up at all.) Again, from your latest link:
> The number of travelers flying Wednesday was half of what it was on the day before Thanksgiving in 2019, before the coronavirus was a threat in the United States
> But those numbers aren't about total air travel, they're about air travel at the holiday at that highest point since March was _still_ a 50% reduction (which is pretty minimally impacted by business travel, so not sure why you're bringing that up at all.) Again, from your latest link
My point in bringing up business travel is that it still happens during the holiday, almost exclusively by air, but the rate of increased travel from late number until thanksgiving is similar to last year.
Meaning if the rate of change is the same but the amount is offset, that could mean either it’s business travel during the holidays, or that there’s a group of people who were going to travel no matter what (which is my point regarding a lockdown not being followed)
Vehicular travel is also representative because it shows how the behavior people who are within driving distance was hardly affected.
In any case my point was about a lockdown not really being feasible to begin with, which we apparently agree on.
In the context of COVID it’s pretty clear collectivist countries had citizens more likely to follow a lockdown and therefore have a better response to Covid.
Just look at the countries that did best, it’s pretty clear.
That being said I wouldn’t say collectivism is superior in general, but for Covid it was helpful
We're already quite collectivist. It's just that some of us are collecting more than others. The "CARES act" gave billionaires more than it gave the 99%. [0][1][2] This was version 2 of the egregious "bailouts" concocted in 2008-9, which were already giant transfers of wealth to the already rich. Every complication in these 10,000-page monstrosities is another place for lobbyists to hide loot for their employers. This is collectivism for the rich.
A change to the sort of collectivism we're taught to fear would be a vast improvement. From the beginning of the pandemic, it was obvious that the just and effective way to "lockdown" would be to pay everyone to stay home. Give everyone who stays home money, for every week they stay home. That would have been more fair and less distorting to the economy. Unfortunately there are no lobbyists representing "everyone".
> The question is how can we change American culture to be more collectivist?
American exceptionalism is so ingrained in the culture that I feel it would take generations..
And, in my opinion, that won't start happening until America is no longer the "world leader" (for better or for worse) that it is today..
It would take humility, selflessness, self-awareness and self-reflection at a very large scale for this kind of transformation to happen.. and we (humans in general - not just Americans) aren't really good at that...
I was worried my parents would end up trapped on a 'plague ship' when this all started, they were on a cruise, but thankfully made it home OK with no infections on the ship.
Being stuck in a tiny cabin, quite possibly with no internet access and minimal entertainment, must be awfully grim. We allow violent prisoners more freedom (social contact at meal times, exercise time, and visits), and even prison cells may be more spacious compared to some cruise ship cabins.
Makes me thankful for my relatively comfortable lockdown time - alone in a relatively small apartment, but with plenty of home comforts and able to go outdoors for exercise.
One question that's been on my mind lately, is if we find this to be true, if we even can; should we hold those in power responsible for their actions?
Many leaders have taken Covid-19 as a free "Do whatever they want" card, with little regard to the hidden negative repercussions of their decisions.
Most of the crew come from poor countries who can't do much to help you. I once got stuck in Heathrow and couldn't get on my next flight to Germany, called the embassy of my european(non eu) country and they just told me to get another flight.
I have the same thoughts after reading it. In fact, the author expounds a little bit on your question later, saying:
"An October 2019 study on the mental well-being of crew, commissioned by a group affiliated with the International Transport Workers’ Federation, the big maritime trade union, found that even before the pandemic about a fifth of mariners surveyed said they had suicidal thoughts."
I'd be curious how the suicide rates compare to a non-pandemic year..
Regardless though, I feel like the juicy part of this article isn't the ~6 suspected suicides, it's how messed up the cruise ship companies are and how badly they botched communication in an attempt to cover their asses. They seem to be purposefully misinforming families about what happened with their loved ones. Some of these suspected suicides were found in their rooms and there doesn't seem to be closure as to what exactly happened. I can't imagine being in that situation.
You’re confusing government policy with being an island. Hawaii has the lowest rate in the USA and California has the highest despite the latter having strictest lockdowns in the country.
Granted a sufficiently incompetent government can throw away the advantage being an island provides. Looking at you UK.
If you're relying on individuals making sensible risk assessments and voluntarily complying, you've already lost the battle. See also: drunk driving and seatbelt use.
You're confusing being an island with becoming one, any nation can be an island if they close their borders.
In Australia we had islands inside the island, several states with land borders closed them to the rest of the country and have enjoyed normality since May.
Even with the massive advantage of being an island, in order to achieve that Australia had to close their borders back when the WHO and the press in every Western country was insisting that doing so was xennphobic and counterproductive, lock down strictly for months (two weeks would not cut it here), they imprisoned a bunch of their poor in tower blocks under conditions so reminisicent of these cruise ships that it was apparently a human rights violation... and in the end they only got a short-lived success out of it, because now there are new outbreaks which are leading to new lockdowns there yet again.
Abstinence is effective at preventing STDs and pregancy, unless you're a sinner. Eating less and exercising more is effective at avoiding obesity, unless you're a lazy glutton. A plan that reliably fails when exposed to human nature is a bad plan.
Abstinence as the primary tool for birth control/STD prevention is stupid because we have better alternatives. If we didn't, abstience would be a lot more popular.
We don't have good alternatives to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Edit: this isn't entirely true though, and there is a lot of grey area. For example, correctly masking & social distancing is a good alternative, but only in spaces where people can/are willing to do it properly.
It sounds like you're saying people who cannot follow lockdown are on par with "sinners" and/or "lazy gluttons", or maybe you're saying some people failing to do something is a good excuse for no one to do it?
Taiwan Japan and Korea are police state? Didn't notice this. I noticed some cops helping a drunk guy into a tax. Also helping to find a lost cat. I guess this is what you mean by police state.
In South Korea the contact tracing led to people being found who were cheating on their partners. Some committed suicide. Moral questions aside, is that the world you want to live in?
I personally don't even use an Android/eyePhone any more to avoid that dystopia.
Last time I checked no other country locks up more people, at higher rates, in prisons it won't even let the UN inspect [0], than the US does. In no other country is one as likely to end up in prison as in the US.
Neither can I think of many countries where police are more heavily armed, literally militarized [1], while killing people at rates that can only be estimated, as there are no state or federal statistics on that.
Still doesn't stop some US Americans from seeing the "police state" everywhere, except at home.
Even after over ten thousand people were arrested, thousands injured, many maimed, protesting against exactly that police state and its violence that disproportionately affects black people and other minorities.
There is zero science on the effectiveness of lockdowns what so ever. the Great Barrington Declaration is a scientific counter to any pro-lockdown arguments as well.
Everyone is saying "We didn't lockdown long and hard enough" .. which is just fucking insane at this point. Unless you're an island nation like NZ, there is literally no way to stop a virus that has entered our ecosystem at this scale. It took over 160 years between the development of the Jenner/Smallpox vaccine and its elimination, with a huge 20 year push in the 60s/70s. This thing will be with us for at least a decade or more to come, and we can't continue fooling ourselves into thinking we can just turn off society like gears in a machine with little to no consequences.
People keep saying that lockdown and elimination strategies only work on islands, but I've yet to hear a compelling narrative why that should be the case.
The only variations in the effectiveness of a lockdown strategy should be due to
- Household size
- Compliance levels
- Duration
Covered population, and population density should be completely irrelevant.
You also need a seperate and ongoing strategy to prevent re-introduction, and an outbreak management strategy, but those are seperate concerns.
Ideally, if your neighbouring countries/states/whatever were similarly effective, then re-introduction management shouldn't be too difficult (cf 'pacific travel bubble', etc).
> but I've yet to hear a compelling narrative why that should be the case.
Why does that matter? We can be confident that something is true without being sure why. We aren't sure what dark energy is, but just from empirical evidence we've observed, we do know that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. How is this situation different?
Name a single consequence of "despair" that is felt 20, 30 years later.
How many times were you despaired in 2000 that you still feel the effects of today? And how many of them are on the same level of importance as a temporary lockdown?
> How many times were you despaired in 2000 that you still feel the effects of today? And how many of them are on the same level of importance as a temporary lockdown?
This is unfair. For a lot of people, these 10 months of lockdown and counting (and the consequences as a result of them) are the worst thing that's ever happened in their lives, so there's nothing equivalently bad to compare it to.
Not sure about 20 or 30 years or "despair" or how it relates to lockdown, but from own experience (only) I can say that prolonged unemployment shakes confidence and makes you cautious taking on large dept / long-time commitment even many years later.
Can you imagine how bad everything would have been without the initial lockdown? Fucking hell, think of a city like New York if NOTHING WAS DONE.
Subsequent lockdowns would NOT have been needed if people would have listened to basic fucking things like: wear a mask, try not to go out unless you really need to, and keep some distance. But no, people are just selfish as hell and it's making it worst for the rest of us. Doesn't help that you have some certain politicians who actively made people resist doing basic things to help out.
You do realize the majority of deaths in NYC were due to Cuomo sending sick COVID-19 elderly patients to be sent to nursing homes and kept in the same rooms as healthy elderly people right? Same with Gov Whitmer in Michigan.
A number of people were killed because of overuse of ventilators. Many people under 40 who were put on them would have likely survived had they not been put on high pressure vents (and they're not used very much today for that reason).
So your premise is if we had done absolutely nothing we would be better off? That doesn't make any sense. If that were true, when lockdowns stopped the deaths would have stopped or rapidly slowed down, but they certainly haven't.
No, the premise is that not locking down and not sending COVID-19 positive patients to nursing homes with healthy ones would have left us better off than locking down and sending COVID-19 positive patients to nursing homes with healthy ones did.
No, that's not what I said. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should nursing homes have been used for anything, other than housing the people who originally paid to be in those homes. The Gov issues an executive order, and the nursing homes told both the NY government and the Michigan government (Whitmer did the same thing) they did not have the tools, beds or people to possible take COVID patients.
The lockdowns are unrelated to the leaders of those two states arbitrarily deciding to using private nursing homes to store patients; homes that didn't have individual rooms or isolation areas. The patients could have literally been sent anywhere else, like the massive emergency shelters in NYC that were totally empty and unused.
In this case, Cuomo killed thousands of people with very bad decisions. Yes, there's a good chance if he did nothing at all, there would have been a lower death count.
The WHO is already telling all nations the lockdowns need to end. There is little to no scientific evidence they've done anything at all! So really, they've likely only done harm and zero good.
No, I'm not. That AP article directly contradicts what the WHO envoy said
> We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Dr. David Nabarro said to The Spectator’s Andrew Neil. “The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.
Honestly, every news organization is continually contradicting themselves at this point. Hell, the New York Times contradicts their own headlines in the same articles!
Your comments on this and other covid stories are a long string of hyperbolic statements followed by walkbacks. Maybe if you offered arguments of narrower scope and supported them with data up front rather than after being challenged you'd find a more receptive audience.
You seem like a smart person and I'm sure you can get the downsides of things like organized disinformation campaigns, the resulting impact on vaccine hesitancy, and the second-order effects like avoidable increases in measles, eg https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7590343/
If you could make more of an effort to communicate your ideas in a cooperative rather than an adversarial fashion that'd be great.
The net psychic cost of lockdowns might be more than if we'd taken the Swedish herd immunity route. We don't have a good way to account for such non tangible costs.
Whether the Swedish herd immunity route was a failure or not is completely subjective. If your highest priority is to prevent all deaths, then it was a failure. If you are comfortable accepting higher elderly mortality to keep public spaces open for young people, it was a perfectly fine policy and it was a pity for Sweden to be shamed by certain media and other countries into reversing it.
If you add up all the years people get to keep living because they didn't die due to the lockdown, the answer to your question is a big negative number.
If the isolation is the cure and covid is the disease, isn't that backwards? The comment says "can't be worse", so they're saying it is preferable, since it can't be worse.
EDIT: Nevermind, I see now that "can't" is probably meant as "shouldn't" instead of "is impossible to".
> I read it as "suicide-inducing isolation is not necessarily preferable to risking COVID spread".
That interpretation is absurd and.far-fetched, as it's based on a couple of suicide cases that happened within a cruise ship whose crew was, for no reason, subjected to solitary confinement for months just because their employer felt no need to repatriate their crew.
And even if we blindly assume those suicides were due to lockdowns, let's put in perspective that those two suicides are dwarfed by the close to two million covid19 deaths so far.
So, I wasn't advocating the implication the original commenter might have been, but I think you're being pretty unreasonable in this post.
> let's put in perspective that those two suicides are dwarfed by the close to two million covid19 deaths so far
These aren't comparable numbers, so I don't see how it provides perspective.
You're comparing the global number of deaths to the number of suicides within a tiny population.
You have to use actual counterfactuals: you're currently comparing apples to oranges.
You'd need to compare the number of ADDITIONAL deaths if these folks weren't confined to these two deaths by suicide or, more interestingly, the number of additional global deaths we would have seen without lockdowns (not that total!) to the the global spike in suicide, if there was one.
(I didn't address your point about the employer's malfeasance because I don't feel like I have anything useful to say there. With that conceded, I am just responding to the other part of your post.)
I guess it's because the article's main topic is suicides that I thought the "cure" being referred to was suicide with the corresponding disease/reason being the isolation, the other main theme of the article.
That a person should threaten to kill themselves with a knife to their own throat every time they are not allowed to do something? Freedom doesn’t mean anarchy.
And what particularly horrible things they were contemplating to do may I ask?
I would rather imagine and prefer the world where those who deprive people of their freedom without said people committing some crimes should be fucking jailed themselves.
3...2...1... before someone complains about scrolling on the site.
On topic, thanks for the article. I had no idea this happened. I didn’t know crew were stuck on the ships. I remember some ships weren’t allowed to dock and unload passengers during the height of the lock downs in March/April. However, I thought that when everyone was allowed off the ships that passengers and crew would be treated equally.
It is becoming a political topic, which is always risky to weigh in on publicly, but I do implore people to keep in mind when deciding on policy the law of unintended consequences. Everything in life is a series of trade offs, including the decision to lock down. Even if you believe the lock downs have been effective, they cause real damage and disruption to people's lives and mental health. It is serious and needs to be considered and weighed.
What we have is a variation on the trolley problem, not a simple "save people with lock downs or not." I have no idea where the right balance is, but I've been shocked and saddened at the unwillingness of pro-lock-down people to consider the unintended consequences here. I have plenty of criticism for the anti mask crowd too, but this comment is already long enough.
[1]: I have no scientific data to back this claim up. This is my opinion extrapolated from anecdata. Take with a grain of salt