81–90 of 121 posts
Excess mortality seems like the best way to track the pandemic because determining whether someone died of covid can be debatable sometimes, but there can be no debate over whether someone died.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know at least one person who’s having problems exacerbated by lack of mobility. Atrophy in old people can be a big problem. I would not go so far as to support anyone claiming this is why we should be breaking quarantine, but can’t quite support racking them all up as COVID deaths either. Reality is somewhere between the two (but close to “most” than “few”)
What about all the traffic accidents which didn’t happen due to shutdown?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are quite a few risk increases associated with general shutdown. This is one with large impact. Another large impact is mental illness, in particular presenting in suicide and substance abuse. On the other side, many other common risks are reduced: workplace injury, other transmissible ailments. If the purpose of the analysis is to determine whether the preventive measure is effective and not overwrought, an ex…
> Another large impact is mental illness, in particular presenting in suicide At least one study didn't find an uptick in suicides as a result of the lockdowns. Situation may differ in America because it's run by idiots that cut off state income support and didn't commit to locking down till the situation was under control. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/28/asia/japan-suicide-women-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Another large impact is mental illness, in particular presenting in suicide At least one study didn't find an uptick in suicides as a result of the lockdowns. Situation may differ in America because it's run by idiots that cut off state income support and didn't commit to locking down till the situation was under control. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
As a counterpoint, Japan seems to be undergoing a startling rise in suicide rates. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/28/asia/japan-suicide-women-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know at least one person who’s having problems exacerbated by lack of mobility. Atrophy in old people can be a big problem. I would not go so far as to support anyone claiming this is why we should be breaking quarantine, but can’t quite support racking them all up as COVID deaths either. Reality is somewhere between the two (but close to “most” than “few”)
What about all the traffic accidents which didn’t happen due to shutdown?
That represents only a few hundred lives, it seems. Deaths per vehicle mile traveled are actually up.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a34240145/2019-2020-traffi...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know at least one person who’s having problems exacerbated by lack of mobility. Atrophy in old people can be a big problem. I would not go so far as to support anyone claiming this is why we should be breaking quarantine, but can’t quite support racking them all up as COVID deaths either. Reality is somewhere between the two (but close to “most” than “few”)
There are quite a few risk increases associated with general shutdown. This is one with large impact. Another large impact is mental illness, in particular presenting in suicide and substance abuse. On the other side, many other common risks are reduced: workplace injury, other transmissible ailments. If the purpose of the analysis is to determine whether the preventive measure is effective and not overwrought, an ex…
Although there clearly is a harmful impact on mental health caused by "general shutdown", it's not clear that it's a net negative. Compared to the potential alternative (higher mortality, overwhelmed health systems, and anxiety about insufficient measures being taken) it may be a net positive.
Excess mortality seems like the best way to track the pandemic because determining whether someone died of covid can be debatable sometimes, but there can be no debate over whether someone died.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Another large impact is mental illness, in particular presenting in suicide At least one study didn't find an uptick in suicides as a result of the lockdowns. Situation may differ in America because it's run by idiots that cut off state income support and didn't commit to locking down till the situation was under control. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
As a counterpoint, Japan seems to be undergoing a startling rise in suicide rates. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/28/asia/japan-suicide-women-...
"We didn't even have a lockdown, and the impact of Covid is very minimal compared to other countries ... but still we see this big increase in the number of suicides," said Michiko Ueda, an associate professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, and an expert on suicides.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't rack them all up as covid deaths. We combine excess mortality with other stats. One of the reasons excess mortality has attracted so much attention is because there are a bunch of people saying that covid just isn't killing many people and we point to the pile of corpses and ask "what happened to them then?"
The main problem is that different people have different definitions what pile of corpses actually is. For me covid is not a big deal and it should have been ignored. And I have came to this conclusion looking at the official data. For a lot of people that are very passionate about masks and lockdowns this is incomprehensible - that I could look at the data and come to different conclusion. That is the point - for me…
In that case, how do you avoid your health system collapsing? The hospitalisation rate for an uncontrolled spread of the virus far exceeds the capacity of any country's health system.
The only option in this case is either to introduce drastic measures to reduce the spread of the virus or accept that very large numbers of people will die at home without oxygen or other medical care.
> for me covid isn't killing many people
If you're doing x to suppress y, you can't claim that low y is a reason not to do x. You have to consider how much y would be if you weren't doing x. And that y would be far higher.
Consider the argument that we should not bother with antibiotics because bacterial infections don't kill many people.
> Which ones again shows how difficult is to argue with someone when your basic axioms, values and definitions mismatch.
It's interesting that not many people are arguing that huge numbers of people would die without measures and that that would be acceptable. People tend to fall into two groups: either restrictions are necessary to avoid large numbers of death, or that restrictions are not necessary because you wouldn't have large numbers of deaths.
This suggests that the argument is not a mismatch of values, but one of whether the data are correct.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about all the traffic accidents which didn’t happen due to shutdown?
domestic violense is up which hurts kids too. Millions will die of starvation around thec world because of extended lockdowns in te west and we could go on.
I'd rather phrase it as "because of inadequate social support during lockdown". A few countries paying low support had money to do more. Blaming that just on long lockdown is missing all the other possible solutions.
As for the effect on mortality of the lockdowns themselves, it will be interesting to look at Australia in a few months where the infections stayed relatively low, but lockdown lasted months. Especially comparing Vic to NSW.