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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

#51

Post by ibejoeb »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #40
watwut wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was this downvoted? It is true that there is difference between "it is illegal to go outside" and "a lot changed, but you still can go for walk or sport".

It is not illegal to go outside in California either. Walking, running, bicycling, etc. are encouraged.

None of those things are "encouraged." There are non-stop radio spots telling people to stay home. You've got cheeky stuff like Randy Newman singing lyrics like "get away from me" to the frankly dystopian line from George Takei saying, "Stay in splendid isolation."

The are otherwise normal people that are still terrified. Anecdotally, I know people who have had the thing and still won't participate in society because they are convinced that they could die. We've really done a good job of disturbing people, and we're going to see weird fallout from it.

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

#52

Post by watwut »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #40
watwut wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was this downvoted? It is true that there is difference between "it is illegal to go outside" and "a lot changed, but you still can go for walk or sport".

It is not illegal to go outside in California either. Walking, running, bicycling, etc. are encouraged.

Thank you.

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

#53

Post by noobaccount »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #47
makomk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Maybe we overreacted just a little bit. Some of these people might’ve just needed a friend.

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

#54

Post by watwut »

ibejoeb wrote: post #51
lern_too_spel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not illegal to go outside in California either. Walking, running, bicycling, etc. are encouraged.

None of those things are "encouraged." There are non-stop radio spots telling people to stay home. You've got cheeky stuff like Randy Newman singing lyrics like "get away from me" to the frankly dystopian line from George Takei saying, "Stay in splendid isolation." The are otherwise normal people that are still terrified. Anecdotally, I know people who have had the thing and still won't participate in society because…

"get away from me" and "Stay in splendid isolation" don't exclude sport or going outside.

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

#55

Post by mattigames »

closeparen wrote: post #42
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.

I would like to see some numbers on that, in general people that are mentally strong are less likely to succumb to suicide when isolation hits, and would explain why other countries such as Netherlands and Japan are seeing a _decline_ of suicide rates, decades of being unable to afford mental health are probably a factor in that; I admid there is a good chance it's not as big of a factor like I imagine, and accumulated stress factors seen only in America are to blame.

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

#56

Post by TeMPOraL »

closeparen wrote: post #42
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.

It's not the same. Unlike with water and thirst, "when I don't have social interaction, I feel despair" is not true for many people, and for those for whom it is, it really depends on what they consider "social interaction" and how much they really "don't have" it.

You could do a rough ordering of quality of social interactions, lowest to highest: no interaction, text messages, IMs, phone calls, video calls, face to face meetings. Most people these days have access to at least phone calls, and my guess is that more than 50% can do video calls with most of their social circle. It's not perfect. Drinking rain water instead of a hot tea isn't ideal either - though it will sustain your life.

Point being, it was expected that limiting people's meatspace interactions will cause psychological pressure to build up, but the extent and seriousness of it is far from obvious.

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

#57

Post by TeMPOraL »

noobaccount wrote: post #50
TeMPOraL wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huh.

Point taken. Thank you for reminding me. You're correct in both guesses, and I do sometimes forget that I'm not suffering through the worst of it.

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

#58

Post by mattigames »

ibejoeb wrote: post #51
lern_too_spel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not illegal to go outside in California either. Walking, running, bicycling, etc. are encouraged.

None of those things are "encouraged." There are non-stop radio spots telling people to stay home. You've got cheeky stuff like Randy Newman singing lyrics like "get away from me" to the frankly dystopian line from George Takei saying, "Stay in splendid isolation." The are otherwise normal people that are still terrified. Anecdotally, I know people who have had the thing and still won't participate in society because…

A lot of those terrified people did indeed die; exactly 1 every 4000 people (in the US), plus a lot more will die in the following months, not to mention the ones that "recover" but thanks to permanent damage to their lungs and other organs will die in the next few years due complications from it, so please let's not talk like those fears are unfounded.

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

#59

Post by deathgrips »

mehrdadn wrote: post #46
makomk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

The CDC wasn't circulating the same facts that South Korea and Singapore were dealing with. Do you remember what Asia was doing in February? The CDC basically created this disaster. We could have shut down air traffic, told the public to use masks in February, and allowed universities and private labs to conduct testing. Instead the CDC lied.

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

#60

Post by deathgrips »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #47
makomk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I'd like to remind people that the pandemic does not significantly increase the risk of death for healthy people under 50. It makes little sense to force young people to stay at home and get fired when the healthy are at little risk of dying and such a lockdown will not completely eliminate a pandemic.
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