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

Yes it is. There are about 3 million deaths in the US every year. Suicides account for 1 to 2% of all deaths. Meaning suicides are a very rare cause of death.

> Suicide was the tenth leading cause of death overall in the United States, claiming the lives of over 47,000 people.

Tenth? And I'm guessing there is a significant drop after the first few causes of deaths. Right?

> There were more than twice as many suicides (47,173) in the United States as there were homicides (19,510).

This doesn't imply that suicides is a prevalent cause of death. It implies that homicides are even a rarer cause of death.

Perhaps different strains of the virus explain this?

Found an article that mentioned a dominant strain infecting Europe and parts of Asia [1]. Maybe other areas have a strain that is not as dangerous?

[1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/is-there-more-than...

I'd like to think you and I could agree in general to a broad set of known facts, and certain ranges of predictions, a set of possible outcomes, etc. But I think we'd still disagree on how to proceed! That's the part I'm curious to talk about. I don't mean to be argumentative with any of this or quibble over details, just trying to share my line of thinking, and curious about yours.

I can agree with the predicted 240k deaths in the U.S. you quoted, I guess that would be about 1 in 1375 people in a country of 330 million. I end up comparing those odds to the 863 of every 100k people how in any given year [1], which is 1 in 115, or almost 12 in 1375. These numbers vary by age, but the averages serve as decent enough discussion points when we talk about a large population in aggregate, which is how I look at this.

I'd feel differently if it were easier/possible to save those 1 in 1375 people who will die from covid, but it's not. The lockdowns were successful keeping hospitals from being overwhelmed (something I supported), but there is zero indication that we can stop this with lockdowns, quarantines, or contact tracing at this point. There are too many infected people. The odds are that there will not be a vaccine for many years, either.

Experts say that the most likely outcomes are that this virus decreases in severity to become another variant of the common cold, or comes up occasionally making for something like a bad flu year [3]

I feel bad for the tens of millions of folks in the U.S. negatively impacted by the lockdowns, especially without evidence supporting that lockdowns will make a long term difference if hospitals are not overwhelmed. I'm afraid the economic price to pay is going to be terrible for so many people, so many lives turned upside down, that the economy is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Look what happened after the 2008 recession, the protests, the ascendency of right wing national politicians, civil wars in the middle east, etc. This looks like it could be worse. I feel horrible about the added debt being passed to the younger generation for this stuff, why should they pay with a lower standard of living because collectively we can't save for a rainy day?

At this point it seems best to me to support hospitals and what we know works, including helping the vulnerable self-isolate. I don't think it's justified to force unwilling people into lockdowns unless hospitals are becoming overwhelmed.

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm [2] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/MortFinal2007_Worktable23r.... [3] https://www.statnews.com/2020/02/04/two-scenarios-if-new-cor...

They oxford trails may fail because they can't find enough infected people, our of 10k volunteers they are worried they might not have 50 infected people, less than 20 and the trial is a failure [1]. The numbers show that this is disappearing, at least this wave.

>The less people are in the hospital the more likely the ones there will receive plentiful care and monitoring, understanding that isn't rocket science.

Are you justifying leaving 40 million Americans unemployed, their lives up in the air, based on the supposed marginal differences between Monday and non-Monday surgeries? Don't you worry about the damage the lockdowns are causing? Do we burden younger generations with more debt and a lower future standard of living when the hospitals are not overcrowded?

I stated my line of thinking, why I went from being scared of the virus in March to being more scared of the damage from the lockdowns by the end of April.

What is your line of thinking? Do you worry about the damage the lockdowns are causing? Do you think the lockdowns are working to eliminate the virus? When do you think is a good time to stop the lockdowns? Do you think it's fair to lockdown people who don't feel the way you do?

I'm genuinely curious about why you think the way you do.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-24/oxford-un...