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A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

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Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#61
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would the numbers look like without mitigations? There are certainly some flu seasons that are 2x worse than average. I imagine that the cutoff between no action and hard mitigation would be a 10x flu event. It seems plausible to me that this would have been 10x the flu with business as usual. That still doesn’t do accounting for the negative effects of mitigation. The truth is that this is an open-ended ethical…

> What would the numbers look like without mitigations? Look at Sweden, you'll find that their very light measures are not worse than the very late but much stronger measures of harder hit areas.

If you compare Sweden to the other Scandinavian countries (which is the most suitable comparison considering population distribution and habits) the light measures actually seem to have resulted in a much higher prevalence.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-14/sweden-co...

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#62
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A young person is building their life, lockdown is preventing them from doing that. For example a person looking to build a family will miss out on a few months they could find a partner, and the fertility clock is ticking

Arguably the fertility clock is ticking harder for those who in their late thirties just realized perhaps it's ok to stop waiting for full employment stability before starting to consider a family.

On the other hand, if you don't do that and end up unemployed, an entire faction will be out to condemn you for having a child you can't support.

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A young person is building their life, lockdown is preventing them from doing that. For example a person looking to build a family will miss out on a few months they could find a partner, and the fertility clock is ticking

> A young person is building their life, lockdown is preventing them from doing that. I find this comment utterly mind boggling. The US's stay at home orders were issued when? Mid to end of March? That makes it what? About 1 month? Are we supposed to believe that "young people" suddenly get into a tail spin because they have to endure a whole month of not finding a partner, get to know each other, make life plans, an…

I find your comment to be even more mind boggling - I'm not exaggerating. The shutdown has been short but it has completely wrecked with education and entry-level jobs, which define a young person's development.

1) Anyone in school has had their education upended. Schools will be closed March through June. That is 3 months of a child or teen's educational/social/psychological development. I'm not even talking about college (which you can argue can muddle along with distance education), or summer activities (which you can argue are optional), but those have been impacted too.

2) For those in college, I would guess the majority have lost internships. Many new grads have lost their jobs. Most new grads probably didn't even get a job by March, and now they likely won't get a job until the end of the year or next year. For the majority of people who don't go to college, many work in service jobs and have been wiped out.

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#66
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly 100,000 people have died of COVID19 and there’s good evidence that this is a substantial undercount. All this in a context where we shut down transmission vectors (being indoors, with lots of people). Most estimates I’ve seen suggest we’ll hit 150k-200k deaths by end of year. 2017-2018 flu season killed about 80,000 with no mitigation efforts. Just on the face of it, this virus is far more than 2x deadlier tha…

> there’s good evidence that this is a substantial undercount. I don’t know about the US, but most European countries count anyone who died with corona as a covid death. No matter how clearly you died to something else.

The overall flu mortality estimation counts people we guess might have flu, but never seeked doctor. As deaths, they estimate how may other deaths are fly and add them (like % of pneumonia). There is also fuzziness about who counts as death from flu too. For covid, there is no added estimation afaik, if you die without test you dont count.

It is not like one number was super clean and other dirty. Both are dirty and estimations.

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#67
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think the CDC numbers seem strange - when I search for "flu IFR" and "coronavirus IFR" what I find for flu is 0.04-0.2% and for coronavirus it's more like 0.4-1%. So these CDC best estimates seem to make the comparison more favorable than the numbers found in other places. It seems like a factor 6 or so difference is realistic, which makes it quite a bit more serious than the flu. One thing that worries me more…

> One thing that worries me more about coronavirus than the flu is that it can cause lasting lung damage. Flu can also cause lasting lung damage. All diseases inducing pneumonia can do that. I have seen no evidence that these things are more prevalent in corona than in influenza. The reason we see so many articles about the rare effects in corona and not the flu is that corona is a hot topic and news is drumming up s…

I agree there is no clear evidence on the prevalence in coronavirus vs flu but I think as a naive estimate it's reasonable to suspect that if it's around 6x more deadly, that serious side effects are similarly more prevalent. Considering we don't know the disease very well it seems better to err on the side of caution.

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't antidepressants in America one of the reasons of the opioid crisis...?

I assume that's a genuine question and that you're not trolling. Opioids are a very different class of drugs than anti depressants (including medication to treat anxiety). While people with mental issues may use opioids for self medication, no reasonable psychiatrist would ever prescribe such medication for psychological issues. Oxy and their ilk were massively pushed by Purdue and their "colleagues" as a non-addicti…

I think he is right. Many depressed, long-term unemployed folk must have had pains of various kind as depression symptoms. I think most folk have used opioids to "treat" their depression, nothing else.

Something like Ruskies with vodka when their empire was collapsing.

The difference is at least their elites weren't in denial about it.

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#69
post #12

I've dealt with depression and anxiety for many years. I just want to tell anyone who happens to read this: it's ok to ask for help, it's ok to go to therapy, it's ok to use antidepressants. Find the tools that work for you and keep asking for help when you need it. (Believe me, I know how hard it is.)

I'm always ignored when I ask for help. Being a person who "takes it like a man" in a sense, as in absorbs these problems for greater overall execution, I'm always ignored when I bring up my problems. "Tough shit" is the general attitude. Unless I'm highly expressive or emotional nobody takes it seriously. But if I'm being that emotional it's already too late.

Re: A third of Americans now show signs of clinical anxiety or depression

#70
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would the numbers look like without mitigations? Look at Sweden, you'll find that their very light measures are not worse than the very late but much stronger measures of harder hit areas.

If you compare Sweden to the other Scandinavian countries (which is the most suitable comparison considering population distribution and habits) the light measures actually seem to have resulted in a much higher prevalence. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-14/sweden-co...

Yes, but not catastrophic prevalence. The question was whether not locking down things like schools would result in much higher deaths than we currently see in for example England or New York. The answer is no, not necessarily.
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