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Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

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Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#41

Post by PopeDotNinja »

mattigames wrote: post #20
SimplyUnknown wrote: post #18

Funnily enough, yesterday an article appeared[1] claiming the number of suicides in the Netherlands has dropped up to 20 percent. Cause as of yet unknown. Also unclear whether this effect is temporary. One hypothesis the article states is that in normal life people's sensory inputs are overwhelmed and cause anxiety. The sudden calmness the lockdown introduced might have a positive effect. This is, however, in contras…

Similar suicide rate decline happened in Japan, decline of work stress factors (e.g. commuting, office, boss) are suspected as the cause. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/japan-suicides...

I wonder what the effects of mass working from home would do for Japanese culture.

The concept of salary person sleeping at their desk until it's time to leave is a foreign concept to me. I'd have a hard time believing it if I hadn't heard about it so much.

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#42

Post by closeparen »

mattigames wrote: post #12

For an opposite example in Japan the stay-at-home order actually reduced the number of suicides[0]. Maybe mental health treatments being so expensive in the US plays a large role in this and the quarantine is just the trigger. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/japan-suicides...

"When I don't drink water, I feel thirst" is a not a medical problem for your doctor to fix, it is a description of how humans work.

"When I don't have social interaction, I feel despair" is the same.

The healthcare system can at best poke the parameters of these systems around the margins. It's not going to eliminate human needs.

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#43

Post by makomk »

mehrdadn wrote: post #11
deathgrips wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You say that as if we've known this since January or something Yes, who could have possibly known about covid19 in January? [0] >and as if you have inside knowledge of what those people are investigating right now. Do you? The news on this has just come out. Maybe give them a chance to react before judging? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that forcing people to stay at home, to socially distance themselves fr…

Come on dude. "Known this" in my sentence was not referring to "the existence of COVID-19" but rather "the fact that we would start seeing more suicides than disease deaths today ". The right choice was shutting things down. The only question was how long it needs to keep going, which people were still trying to figure out. Now this event might give them more information that might help them figure it out. If you're…

We don't know that was the right choice at all. This is a new, untested pandemic response that hasn't been used before, essentially a planet-scale experiment with everyone's futures: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distan... It had some definite opposition from experts when it was developed, and seems to have won out for political reasons.

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#44

Post by TeMPOraL »

ibejoeb wrote: post #8
deathgrips wrote: post #2

At what point are more people killing themselves than are getting saved by quarantine orders? No one is seriously making this calculation.

It's going to be impossible to track, but surely the financial ruin the governments have compelled people to endure is going to kill many, many thousands of people. It's also not politically advantageous to even consider it, let alone talk about it. In a year, when nobody cares anymore, and people are killing themselves, it will never come back to haunt the policy makers that provoked it all.

If only many, many thousands of people die due to economic issues, that's still a huge win over what the virus would have done if left to run through the country at full speed.

Economic problems would've happened anyway. Global supply chains were already in disarray even before March, as China essentially lost two months of manufacturing output, container ships stopped sailing, and the whole chain was pushed into oscillations it'll take a year or more to recover from (affectionately known as the "bullwhip effect"). Airlines and hotels were done the moment the virus landed in Italy - at this point everyone with half a brain started to cancel any trip they could cancel, weeks before governments in Europe got a clue and started locking down their borders.

The only way the government could've saved restaurants, nail salons, et al. from suffering similar fate would be by suppressing all information about the virus and going to full denial mode. Otherwise, the customer base would've mostly evaporated anyway, lockdown or no lockdown, and you'd still have rolling shutdowns as place after place had to be quarantined for 2+ weeks after some employee or customer was found sick. With hotels and restaurants barely surviving on fumes, the pressure on the food supply chain would've been only little worse than it is with these places shut down.

Anyway, it's not like the governments around the world started to shut down their countries because they were bored, and wanted to stir things up. They actually dragged their feet for weeks after people following the evolution of the virus started stocking up, limiting interactions, pushing for WFH and practicing social distancing.

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#45

Post by Someone »

DXA9zE wrote: post #24
SimplyUnknown wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you live in the Netherlands, but stating "only certain businesses like brothels have been suspended" is a massive understatement of the impact of the "intelligent lockdown" as it is called. Bars, gyms, schools have been closed for two months now. Only a few restaurants offer take-out and more offer delivery. Dining in is not possible. Work-from-home is default for everyone I know. Nursing homes have o…

> It is true that the Netherlands was not locked down, but people definitely are not going normal about their lives. True, it's even better than normal. Let's not pretend that the extent of California's reaction to the coronavirus is even comparable to that of Netherlands, Japan, etc..

Can you give an example of something that’s hugely different? Reading https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/california-cor... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23269838, I don’t see huge ones.

I would think the main difference in effect on suicide rates (if any) is in the system of government benefits. It’s less stressful to lose your job in the Netherlands than in the USA.

I think it also is telling that the governor of one of the richest parts of one of the richest countries in the world deemed it necessary to say “garbage collection will continue.”

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#46

Post by mehrdadn »

makomk wrote: post #43
mehrdadn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on dude. "Known this" in my sentence was not referring to "the existence of COVID-19" but rather "the fact that we would start seeing more suicides than disease deaths today ". The right choice was shutting things down. The only question was how long it needs to keep going, which people were still trying to figure out. Now this event might give them more information that might help them figure it out. If you're…

We don't know that was the right choice at all. This is a new, untested pandemic response that hasn't been used before, essentially a planet-scale experiment with everyone's futures: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/politics/social-distan... It had some definite opposition from experts when it was developed, and seems to have won out for political reasons.

To clarify: I meant "the right choice" given the information, ideas, and means they had available at the time. Not "the right choice if everything was possible and known".

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#47

Post by TeMPOraL »

makomk wrote: post #38
jazzyjackson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the same conflation as "the lockdown hurts the economy"/"an out of control pandemic hurts the economy" Maybe being told to stay indoors spikes hopelessness, or it could be that living in a country with an out of control pandemic with no end in sight spikes hopelessness. There's a lot of factors that make the world a stressful, bleak looking place besides stay at home orders.

We have other pandemics that we could probably test this hypothesis with, but I suspect that it would be more accurate to say that how we see this particular pandemic is what causes both the massive economic damage and the feelings of hopelessness, suicides, etc. Businesses are losing customers not because the government imposed a lockdown, but because people think they can stop the pandemic and avoid death by stayin…

> Businesses are losing customers not because the government imposed a lockdown, but because people think they can stop the pandemic and avoid death by staying away. Though there's probably not going to be much enthusiasm from the media towards exploring this idea, since it puts the economic damage etc squarely on their heads.

Perhaps let's first explore the question whether they were right. Epidemiology 101 seems to say they absolutely were. The less people interact in close quarters, the less a sickness spread.

I have a feeling we're forgetting here that there's an actual virus on the loose. The pandemic isn't a media construct, it's not a mass hysteria. So I think we should also entertain the option that a virus spreading fast through our communities is also responsible for some of the economic damage.

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#48

Post by cmdshiftf4 »

ibejoeb wrote: post #8
deathgrips wrote: post #2

At what point are more people killing themselves than are getting saved by quarantine orders? No one is seriously making this calculation.

It's going to be impossible to track, but surely the financial ruin the governments have compelled people to endure is going to kill many, many thousands of people. It's also not politically advantageous to even consider it, let alone talk about it. In a year, when nobody cares anymore, and people are killing themselves, it will never come back to haunt the policy makers that provoked it all.

The end of this year will be very bleak. By then, the stimulus checks (to businesses and individuals) will have run out, mortgage / loan deferrals will have come due, jobs will be lost and there's continued talk of a second wave of the coronavirus around then.

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#49

Post by TeMPOraL »

deathgrips wrote: post #10
mehrdadn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if we've known this since January or something... and as if you have inside knowledge of what those people are investigating right now. Do you? The news on this has just come out. Maybe give them a chance to react before judging?

>You say that as if we've known this since January or something Yes, who could have possibly known about covid19 in January? [0] >and as if you have inside knowledge of what those people are investigating right now. Do you? The news on this has just come out. Maybe give them a chance to react before judging? It doesn't take a genius to figure out that forcing people to stay at home, to socially distance themselves fr…

Nobody said shutting down will not have its own casualties. There was never a bloodless option on the table.

It's like a choice whether to evacuate a city that's threatened by an active volcano. The volcano may or may not erupt. It either kills everyone, or nothing happens. But announcing the evacuation is sentencing some people to death: think of all the people in emergency rooms, on life support, etc., many of whom will not survive being moved. And then you'll have "death by economics" among the evacuated, as they fail to adjust to their new reality in emergency housing, with no jobs, living among strangers not too happy about the sudden population increase in their area.

It's a tough choice, but it's a game of numbers. To a first approximation, even if lockdown is going to kill 0.01% of people one way or another, if it prevents 0.1% of people from dying, it's worth it and it's the right choice. In reality, there's uncertainty around these estimates that need to be taken into account, but the idea is the same.

(Tangent: I hate point estimates with a passion; I wish there was an easy and standardized way to express distributions in plain text.)

Re: Suicides on the rise amid stay-at-home order, Bay Area medical professionals say

#50

Post by noobaccount »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #44
ibejoeb wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to be impossible to track, but surely the financial ruin the governments have compelled people to endure is going to kill many, many thousands of people. It's also not politically advantageous to even consider it, let alone talk about it. In a year, when nobody cares anymore, and people are killing themselves, it will never come back to haunt the policy makers that provoked it all.

If only many, many thousands of people die due to economic issues, that's still a huge win over what the virus would have done if left to run through the country at full speed. Economic problems would've happened anyway. Global supply chains were already in disarray even before March, as China essentially lost two months of manufacturing output, container ships stopped sailing, and the whole chain was pushed into osc…

I immediately know two things about you:

1. You don’t live alone.

2. You have a job.

I think we’re all a little short on empathy these days.

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