Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows • Hacker News Board

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#51

Post by occamschainsaw » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 4:39 PM UTC

bencollier49 wrote: post #13

devalgo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Someone stuck in a one-person flat will have a different experience. As someone in this position I can say that the lack of a commute has been amazing, I'm sleeping much better and less stressed overall but the lack of social contact is definitely weighing down.

I can sympathise. A lot of the time you don't even spot loneliness. Years later you realise it was eating away at your mental health. I think cultures which move their children directly from the family household into a marriage may be on to something.

Also cultures where multiple generations living under the same roof is the norm. I left home at 18 for university and had given up any expectations of living with my family for meaningful amounts of time (a couple of weeks a year is not the same, felt like a guest in my own home). Because of covid, I have been at home since a couple of months. My mental health has improved drastically. I didn't even realize the ways in which I was in a dark place when I lived by myself. I am really debating if achieving 100% of my professional goals is worth it, or if I could be satisfied with 80% but living with/close to family.

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#52

Post by bitbuilder » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

qubex wrote: post #18

eric_b wrote: post #9

Lockdowns are terrible for human mental health. We're not meant to live that way. I mean, we put people in prison as punishment because it sucks. I don't care what these people read in to the data - lockdowns are hurting everyone's mental health and making people act strangely. We know a lot about COVID now - who's most vulnerable, how likely people are to die, etc. What staggers me is that huge groups of people are…

> lockdowns are terrible for human mental health That’s exactly what this study is disproving. At the very least, this data is showing something that is well-known in behavioural circles: that once the threshold of a radical change is overcome, people begin to habituate to it and regress towards the mean. > we put people in prison as punishment Lockdown with family in one’s dwelling isn’t prison. Imprisonments is abo…

>Lockdown with family in one’s dwelling isn’t prison.

You seem to be forgetting about the sizable percentage of the population that lives alone in their small dwelling. I know a lot of these people and my own anecdata indicates a lot of them are having mental health issues.

>Imprisonments is about much more than a loss of mobility.

Well sure, but I think it would be hard to argue that confinement and the resulting lack of mobility isn't the primary role of a prison.

And even in prison, we let prisoners eat with friends, play sports with friends, work with their friends, visit with family, etc. These are all things most of us felt we couldn't do during the height of lockdown.

And why do we allow prisoners to do all those things? Because we recognize that it's inhumane to deprive people of social interaction for extended periods of time.

To further reinforce this, what do we do when someone's in prison, and we want to punish them more? We decrease their mobility and increase their isolation by putting them in a small room by themselves.

Please note, I'm not arguing that lockdown was the wrong move, or that we shouldn't continue to consider various lockdown measures.

I am saying that we shouldn't be dismissive of concerns about the toll long term isolation is having on people's mental health. And that consideration of various lockdown measures should be taking into account these mental health concerns and weighing them against public health concerns.

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#53

Post by jariel » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

Was it lockdowns?

Or the beginning of the realisation that this is not the black plague come to wipe us out, and that it's going to affect mostly specific groups?

Edit: what they should map is probably a 'fear index'. Watching NYC / Gov. Cuomo on CNN every day, talk about 'hospitals overflowing' in NY, thinking 'OMG that is what is going to happen where I live soon' - literally Army Medical ships being sent in for civilian purposes, daily news clips of increasing numbers of deaths, all of the unknown - that was scary. We're no longer 'living in fear', rather, come to accept the uncomfortable terms of social distancing, not going to work etc.. The tone in the daily news is completely different. Also, we are now over the first wave of 'cognisance' of the situation. 3 months ago what happened was utterly unimaginable to all of us. Literally all businesses closing their doors, sports cancelled, we were in 'shock'. We're not in 'shock' anymore, we're dealing with 'the new normal'.

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#54

Post by jariel » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

eric_b wrote: post #9

Lockdowns are terrible for human mental health. We're not meant to live that way. I mean, we put people in prison as punishment because it sucks. I don't care what these people read in to the data - lockdowns are hurting everyone's mental health and making people act strangely. We know a lot about COVID now - who's most vulnerable, how likely people are to die, etc. What staggers me is that huge groups of people are…

There was nothing remotely close to 'lock-down' in the US.

We just stopped going to the office, restaurants, close quarters public spaces.

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#55

Post by cookingrobot » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #41

cirgue wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am 100% ok grunting through a lockdown if it shortens the duration of this awful fucking pandemic. The current soft restrictions with no clear endgame is 1000 times more shitty than having to hole up in your apartment knowing that it will end all the other restrictions sooner.

What if the lockdowns just lengthen the duration of the pandemic and the ultimate endpoints are nearly identical? Some amount of lengthening is essential to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, of course. In many lockdown environments, the target case numbers are much lower than necessary for that goal, if not zero.

That would be true if there was no vaccine coming and everyone was going to get it eventually. But if we expect a vaccine sometime in the next year or so, we can try to minimize the number of cases and deaths until then. So far about 1.5% of the US has tested positive for it, so maybe 2-10% have been exposed. If we can keep that under 20%, that will be a lot fewer deaths than if we let it run free to herd immunity levels at 95%.

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#56

Post by isoskeles » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

qubex wrote: post #30

refurb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data looks like crap? They used search terms (!) and then had to estimate some data because they didn’t start collecting until after Covid hit. Unfortunately, overall life satisfaction questions were only introduced into the mood tracker in April 2020. So, to consider how the pandemic and lockdown affected people’s general wellbeing, we had to attribute scores to respondents for the period prior to April based on…

The data may look like crap (to you) but it’s better than absolutist remarks and anecdotal allusions... and as this thread so aptly shows, there’s been a range of reactions, some even favourable.

There are absolutist remarks because people know whether or not their own well-being has improved, much better than a study that attempts to declare what their reality is. More than ever, I’m suspicious that social scientists might have an agenda. And their methods are, as usual, not even close to physical sciences.

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#57

Post by rossdavidh » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

Wow, my initial thought was, either this is a deeply flawed analysis, or I am just totally wired differently than other people. Lockdown was _awful_, and we didn't even do it as long in Texas as in many places. Many friends of mine have expressed a lot of feelings of rage, despair, etc. during the lockdown. Whoever the people are that felt better, I don't know them, or at least they don't talk to me about how they're feeling.

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#58

Post by fragmede » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #26

eric_b wrote: post #9

Lockdowns are terrible for human mental health. We're not meant to live that way. I mean, we put people in prison as punishment because it sucks. I don't care what these people read in to the data - lockdowns are hurting everyone's mental health and making people act strangely. We know a lot about COVID now - who's most vulnerable, how likely people are to die, etc. What staggers me is that huge groups of people are…

I agree that lockdowns & SIPs are terrible. It’s why people dislike being grounded at home or like you said serving a sentence at home, etc. Of course there are things we have to weigh, physical health threat vs mental health pressures and national security, etc. But you are absolutely right that the media want to paint narratives. I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not so much collusion but rather it’s their nature to…

With the rise of Craigslist and the Internet, mainstream media is more reliant than ever on advertising. If there's a cute story about someone being nice, well, that's cute but boring. But if there's someone being horrible, gosh, I'm going to rush to go over and stare at the car crash, judge them for being horrible, be angry that they're horrible, feel smug about the fact that I'm not horrible. Possibly go on some sort of screed about "those people". All the meanwhile, I'm watching the advertisement because I really have to see whatever the thing is right after that.

"The media", in so far as it's a monolithic group (it's not), needs to get us riled up, divided, and angry. Not for some nefarious shadow government pulling the strings reasons, but because they need to pay the bills.

What's fascinating is how well the media as a whole manages to do it. Some portion of the masses can accept a mainstream point of view (eg wearing masks), but it seems a certain percentage of people just really have to not. And to those people (who are all the same), "alternative outlets" sell them on being special and that they are the only thinkers out there. Not like the rest of the sheep wearing muzzles. It would be funnier if it weren't literally life-threatening right now.

Step back, consider your principles, and draw your own conclusions. But it has to be okay if those conclusions simply accept what the mainstream narrative is telling you. Which is wear a mask, especially when indoors with groups of people.

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#59

Post by xapata » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

tdfx wrote: post #37

cirgue wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am 100% ok grunting through a lockdown if it shortens the duration of this awful fucking pandemic. The current soft restrictions with no clear endgame is 1000 times more shitty than having to hole up in your apartment knowing that it will end all the other restrictions sooner.

I've heard this many times but I don't understand the thinking behind it. How could a lockdown shorten the duration of a pandemic? AFAIK there's only three ways a pandemic ends: (1) eradication: we control the spread so effectively through testing, tracing, and isolation that no more new people are infected (2) herd immunity: enough people get infected that the potential pool of new hosts causes the transmission rate…

Right, but the lockdown helps us choose exit door 3 (inoculation) instead of 2 (herd immunity).

Re: Wellbeing levels fell with the pandemic but improved under lockdown, data shows

#60

Post by uallth00 » Wed, Aug 12, 2020, 4:58 PM UTC

bencollier49 wrote: post #13

devalgo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Someone stuck in a one-person flat will have a different experience. As someone in this position I can say that the lack of a commute has been amazing, I'm sleeping much better and less stressed overall but the lack of social contact is definitely weighing down.

I can sympathise. A lot of the time you don't even spot loneliness. Years later you realise it was eating away at your mental health. I think cultures which move their children directly from the family household into a marriage may be on to something.

Neuroscience has collected enough evidence to argue we crave social connectivity from the start, as our birth and early nurturing itself puts the habit into our daily working memory.

Given that, it could be a gap from family to 20s single life may cause a shock to the system to be better understood.

Is there such a thing as too harsh an emotional break to self reliance and does it have an epigenetic or other measurable response?

And consider elites almost always have a big family watching their back, so to speak. Often nurturing and supportive in ways the hip youth find stifling and cowardly.