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> ... vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious. I haven't seen good polling numbers around this, but I suspect it's not

by Jedd 6y ago

> ... vs the benefits of suppressing a virus that many consider to be not very serious. I haven't seen good polling numbers around this, but I suspect it's not actually 'many', but rather a highly vocal small number of people, blessed with hubris, ignorance, and/or partisan agendas. I appreciate that there's some significant impact to a lot of people, and that my world view is significantly skewed because I'm not in that category, but what we continue to find out about the way this disease can affect otherwise fit & healthy people, and with the unfortunate benefit of seeing what is happening in countries that aren't as committed to controlling this, indicates we've probably made the right decisions here.

0xy 6y ago
Lockdown has a death toll. This is just fact. People delay preventative treatment, they get depressed, overweight, suicides skyrocket. In Melbourne in particular, there was a giant spike in 12 year olds getting prescribed serious anti-depressant medication. Four newborn babies died because the South Australian government did not want to risk flying them to Melbourne for treatment. Lockdown primarily harms young people (ostensibly to save old people, the primary victims of the virus). I think this is such a sickening calculation. We're enslaving our children to debt, depriving them of social lives (this can have permanent impacts), some of them commit suicide, some of them are denied treatment by government and die and they're not getting as much exercise and are also eating poorly. I'm really tired of seeing people gloss over the effects of lockdown, because lockdown is dangerous in itself. Is the virus or the lockdown more dangerous? Well, that remains to be seen. In Australia, an additional 4,000 - 7,000 suicides were projected beyond the norm as a result of lockdowns. [1] This is significantly higher than the death toll of the virus and is only a single datapoint. It doesn't include people skipping preventative appointments and dying as a result, or the long term effects of massive depression and obesity spikes. [1] https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-likely-lead-increased-rates-suicide-and-mental-illness https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-lik...
- disdain_stain 6y ago
  where did you get the 4,000-7,000 figure? There were 3,048 suicides in Australia in 2018[1]. Data from the Victorian coroner shows that there's been roughly the same number of suicides in the state this year up to August 27 as last year(466 this year vs. 468 last year)[2]. [1] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/suicide-and-intentional-self-harm https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/suicide-an... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-rates-in-victoria-during-covid-19-lockdowns/12602060 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-r...
  - 0xy 6y ago
    Don't take this the wrong way, but did you read your own source? It literally proves my point. >"We still think we're going to see, over the course of a 12-month period … and then subsequent years, in the order of 30 per cent increase [in] suicide rates," he said. 30% of 3,048 is 914. 5 years of that is 4,572 additional suicides. I got the 5 years data point from the Australian Medical Association. [1] [1] https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-likely-lead-increased-rates-suicide-and-mental-illness https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-lik...
    - howlgarnish 6y ago
      By what mechanism does a lockdown ending in 2020 cause 30% spike in suicides in 2024?
      - 0xy 6y ago
        Assuming this is a genuine question, thousands of businesses and lives have been irreparably destroyed. Suicide can take years to manifest after trauma. It's also worth noting that a lot of people have been temporarily propped up by government social programs, which will presumably end at some point. Once they do end, the destruction is no longer hideable and the people who have been made destitute by government mandates will have absolutely nothing. A restaurant owner who saved their entire life to open up a business was forced to shut down for the greater part of a year with inadequate government support. Of course that causes depression and even suicide in some cases. Their life's work has been eviscerated through no fault of their own. During the lockdown, the government's message was essentially "do not open your business by threat of enforcement action, but by the way you have to keep paying your rent/mortgage and we're going to give you a token amount of money to help". While this was happening, governments around the world were throwing cash at banks and big business. Small businesses got screwed. As usual. As for the specific medical reasoning, I'm no medical professional and would not pretend to know how the Australian Medical Association comes up with their claims. If you were questioning the source, I'd implore you to post counter-evidence.
- berdario 6y ago
  The pandemic has a death toll. A lot of these things would've happened even without a lockdown, since if the pandemic goes badly enough, huge swaths of the population would've shut themselves at home to avoid risk of contagion. Also, the virus is clearly more dangerous than the lockdown: you have seen what happens when the lockdown is applied to the whole population, but you haven't yet seen what happens when the virus has spread to 50%+ of the population (and it's especially ugly if it'd happen all in a short amount of time). It's sad to know about additional suicides, though the reports I've seen say that there hasn't been any increase in suicides during the lockdowns (but again: it might've been specific to the situation in Europe)
  - matwood 6y ago
    > The pandemic has a death toll. This is important to repeat and add also add economic toll. People blame the death and economic toll on lockdowns or other mitigation measures, but the toll is from the pandemic itself. Even if no state mitigation measures were implemented, there would still be a huge economic and mental health toll.
  - EricE 6y ago
    Sweden didn't lock down and if you look at the deaths per million they are the lowest in Europe. Raw infection numbers are scary, but not very telling since testing is far from universal or error free. Death stats aren't that reliable either. Covid seems to be deadly and a miracle cure at the same time - it's amazing how death rates for other maladies all seem to be dramatically down. I'm sure that is just coincidence.
    - pvaldes 6y ago
      > Sweden didn't lock down and if you look at the deaths per million they are the lowest in Europe. This is False (obviously). Germany: 126 deaths by million Portugal: 247 France: 549 Sweden: 580 Spain: 764
    - aedanman 6y ago
      Well if we all do what Sweden did and apply it to the world population only 39,000,000 people need to die from Covid. Sounds reasonable.
- flamble 6y ago
  > Lockdown has a death toll. This is just fact. I steeled myself to read this post in the most charitable possible light. Yes, lockdown most likely has some death toll. But the specific points you're making are very dubious and also very recognisable as the effect of consuming specific kinds of media. Firstly, the point about "not getting as much exercise" is frustrating. Back when we didn't have data on this, it was annoying to me to hear people's absolute conviction that (a) people would exercise less and (b) the effect would be so large that it would lead to a decrease in obesity significant enough to offset the number of life-years lost to COVID, especially since the lockdown personally prompted me to start exercising MORE due to my new surplus of idle time. We now have some suggestion that for previously sedentary people, it led to more exercise (my experience) and for previously active people, it led to a decrease. I'd love to see any suggestion that the net effect of this was so colossal as to produce the adverse health outcomes of whose existence you seem so confident. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7312512/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7312512/ > In Australia, an additional 4000-7000 suicides were projected At least in Victoria, it seems like these predictions were unfounded. Of course, that is not going to stop people from repeating this talking point. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-rates-in-victoria-during-covid-19-lockdowns/12602060 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-r...
  - disdain_stain 6y ago
    If that suicide prediction was made it must have been early on in the pandemic when no one really what was going to happen. If there was an increase of 4000-7000 that'd mean 2-3 times the ~3,000 suicides that occurred in Australia last year.
    - 0xy 6y ago
      Stop repeating this false claim. I never said it'd increase in a single year (strawman). The Australian Medical Association projects 750-1,000 additional suicides for 5 years. [1] That's an increase of 3,750 - 5,000 additional suicides. Some have projected a 50% increased suicide rate, if that happened for 5 years it'd be 7,500 additional suicides. [1] https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-likely-lead-increased-rates-suicide-and-mental-illness https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-lik...
- alisonatwork 6y ago
  I agree with the spirit of your comment, but I would also like to see some hard (not projected) numbers to take it beyond speculation. Where I currently live in BC (Canada), there have been more overdose deaths than coronavirus deaths in 2020[0]. It might be the case that the overdoses have increased precisely because of lockdown. It might also not be the case. That remains to be investigated. I think it's superficially easy to blame suicide, overdose, domestic violence etc on the lockdown, but that's hard to prove, because who's to say it's not a reaction to the overall situation of people dying of a brand new disease? Personally, I really resent lockdown/movement restrictions and I think it's a garbage policy, right back from when I lived in China during the initial outbreak. However, I also have to admit that the countries that locked down seem to have successfully knocked this virus on the head, whereas those that didn't are still suffering the effects. Perhaps a lengthier lockdown pain at the beginning is better than this drawn-out shitshow of half-assed measures that other countries are going through? I dunno. [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/overdose-deaths-bc-august-2020-1.5735247 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/overdose-dea...
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    Knocked on the head...for now. All it takes is for one person to start the virus up again and the entire country has to go back into lock down. They're playing a permanant game of country wide lockdown whack a mole with the virus. No one can ever get comfortable again until herd immunity is reached which lockdowns delay.
    - rswail 6y ago
      We all know that we are in "COVID normal" not "normal" until there is a widely delivered effective vaccine. However, it's much easier to test, trace and isolate small outbreaks ("whack a mole") than if its widely spread and uncontrolled. Recently we had a single case of a school child that went back to school before they should have. Two days after he tested positive, the following happened: * The school was closed and deep cleaned * Close contacts and close contacts of those contacts went into quarantine. This ended up being approximately 800 people. * All of them were tested within 48 hours and even further contacts (not "close") were also tested to the point that approximately 5000 tests were done and no additional cases were found. You can't do that tracing and isolation if there is wide community transmission.
loblollyboy 6y ago
Sounds like you’ve gone to the argument of “this can affect fit and healthy people in other ways that we may not even know.” It is clear that the death toll is overwhelmingly skewed toward the elderly. Many of whom died in the first wave as corona prob got into many nursing homes before we knew better. We are now very careful w nursing homes/ elderly, we might see cases go up but as long as you protect them the deaths/ hospitalizations shouldn’t show similar levels to spring 2020. I don’t think you can deny this, so pro-lockdown people are now mainly using this “it can affect young people” argument to avoid cognitive dissonance - I have yet to see proof. I only have seen an article that says there is lung damage after infection which diminishes over the course of weeks. This is what you would expect with any kind of damage but the article had a ridiculous title like “coronavirus may lead to long lasting damage.” Lastly, I see a lot of ambulances these days - it serves as a reminder to check myself. But we’re all probably pretty analytical here and you can’t justify a strict lockdown from a utilitarian standpoint.
- Jedd 6y ago
  > Sounds like you’ve gone to the argument of “this can affect fit and healthy people in other ways that we may not even know.” Not so much an argument of, than an observation regarding, the unpredictable mid to long term impacts of this infection in the demographic that includes most of the 'it's harmless' crowd. Ie, the 20-40yo, relatively healthy individuals. Most of whom, I hasten to add, are cautious rather than cavalier -- but within which group there are sufficient case studies of severe debilitation lasting very many months, and occasional signs of much longer term damage. Basically my position is 'we don't know' with a consequence of 'let's assume it's worse than we hope'. > It is clear that the death toll is overwhelmingly skewed toward the elderly. Almost definitely. And if you're not in the 'elderly' demographic, or care about people who are, this is probably less worrying for you. > ... similar levels to spring 2020. Spring 2020 started two months ago. I mean, TFA is about Coronavirus in Australia, and Australia is where I am right now, and Spring is what's happening here now. > I don’t think you can deny this, so pro-lockdown people are now mainly using this “it can affect young people” argument to avoid cognitive dissonance - I have yet to see proof. Apologies -- but I do not understand the point you are trying to make here. > I only have seen an article that says there is lung damage after infection which diminishes over the course of weeks. This is what you would expect with any kind of damage but the article had a ridiculous title like “coronavirus may lead to long lasting damage.” Lastly, I see a lot of ambulances these days - it serves as a reminder to check myself. But we’re all probably pretty analytical here and you can’t justify a strict lockdown from a utilitarian standpoint. You mention 'here' without describing where that actually is. And you mention an article that said something you didn't like, but don't provide a reference to that article. Apparently there are ambulances near you. You then conclude that a lockdown is not justifiable, despite TFA being about how lockdowns have effectively halted the spread of SARS-CoV2 within Australia.

by Jedd 6y ago

0xy 6y ago

Lockdown has a death toll. This is just fact. People delay preventative treatment, they get depressed, overweight, suicides skyrocket. In Melbourne in particular, there was a giant spike in 12 year olds getting prescribed serious anti-depressant medication. Four newborn babies died because the South Australian government did not want to risk flying them to Melbourne for treatment. Lockdown primarily harms young people (ostensibly to save old people, the primary victims of the virus). I think this is such a sickening calculation. We're enslaving our children to debt, depriving them of social lives (this can have permanent impacts), some of them commit suicide, some of them are denied treatment by government and die and they're not getting as much exercise and are also eating poorly. I'm really tired of seeing people gloss over the effects of lockdown, because lockdown is dangerous in itself. Is the virus or the lockdown more dangerous? Well, that remains to be seen. In Australia, an additional 4,000 - 7,000 suicides were projected beyond the norm as a result of lockdowns. [1] This is significantly higher than the death toll of the virus and is only a single datapoint. It doesn't include people skipping preventative appointments and dying as a result, or the long term effects of massive depression and obesity spikes. [1] https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-likely-lead-increased-rates-suicide-and-mental-illness https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-lik...

disdain_stain 6y ago
where did you get the 4,000-7,000 figure? There were 3,048 suicides in Australia in 2018[1]. Data from the Victorian coroner shows that there's been roughly the same number of suicides in the state this year up to August 27 as last year(466 this year vs. 468 last year)[2]. [1] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/suicide-and-intentional-self-harm https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/suicide-an... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-rates-in-victoria-during-covid-19-lockdowns/12602060 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-r...
- 0xy 6y ago
  Don't take this the wrong way, but did you read your own source? It literally proves my point. >"We still think we're going to see, over the course of a 12-month period … and then subsequent years, in the order of 30 per cent increase [in] suicide rates," he said. 30% of 3,048 is 914. 5 years of that is 4,572 additional suicides. I got the 5 years data point from the Australian Medical Association. [1] [1] https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-likely-lead-increased-rates-suicide-and-mental-illness https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-lik...
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
    By what mechanism does a lockdown ending in 2020 cause 30% spike in suicides in 2024?
    - 0xy 6y ago
      Assuming this is a genuine question, thousands of businesses and lives have been irreparably destroyed. Suicide can take years to manifest after trauma. It's also worth noting that a lot of people have been temporarily propped up by government social programs, which will presumably end at some point. Once they do end, the destruction is no longer hideable and the people who have been made destitute by government mandates will have absolutely nothing. A restaurant owner who saved their entire life to open up a business was forced to shut down for the greater part of a year with inadequate government support. Of course that causes depression and even suicide in some cases. Their life's work has been eviscerated through no fault of their own. During the lockdown, the government's message was essentially "do not open your business by threat of enforcement action, but by the way you have to keep paying your rent/mortgage and we're going to give you a token amount of money to help". While this was happening, governments around the world were throwing cash at banks and big business. Small businesses got screwed. As usual. As for the specific medical reasoning, I'm no medical professional and would not pretend to know how the Australian Medical Association comes up with their claims. If you were questioning the source, I'd implore you to post counter-evidence.
berdario 6y ago
The pandemic has a death toll. A lot of these things would've happened even without a lockdown, since if the pandemic goes badly enough, huge swaths of the population would've shut themselves at home to avoid risk of contagion. Also, the virus is clearly more dangerous than the lockdown: you have seen what happens when the lockdown is applied to the whole population, but you haven't yet seen what happens when the virus has spread to 50%+ of the population (and it's especially ugly if it'd happen all in a short amount of time). It's sad to know about additional suicides, though the reports I've seen say that there hasn't been any increase in suicides during the lockdowns (but again: it might've been specific to the situation in Europe)
- matwood 6y ago
  > The pandemic has a death toll. This is important to repeat and add also add economic toll. People blame the death and economic toll on lockdowns or other mitigation measures, but the toll is from the pandemic itself. Even if no state mitigation measures were implemented, there would still be a huge economic and mental health toll.
- EricE 6y ago
  Sweden didn't lock down and if you look at the deaths per million they are the lowest in Europe. Raw infection numbers are scary, but not very telling since testing is far from universal or error free. Death stats aren't that reliable either. Covid seems to be deadly and a miracle cure at the same time - it's amazing how death rates for other maladies all seem to be dramatically down. I'm sure that is just coincidence.
  - pvaldes 6y ago
    > Sweden didn't lock down and if you look at the deaths per million they are the lowest in Europe. This is False (obviously). Germany: 126 deaths by million Portugal: 247 France: 549 Sweden: 580 Spain: 764
  - aedanman 6y ago
    Well if we all do what Sweden did and apply it to the world population only 39,000,000 people need to die from Covid. Sounds reasonable.
flamble 6y ago
> Lockdown has a death toll. This is just fact. I steeled myself to read this post in the most charitable possible light. Yes, lockdown most likely has some death toll. But the specific points you're making are very dubious and also very recognisable as the effect of consuming specific kinds of media. Firstly, the point about "not getting as much exercise" is frustrating. Back when we didn't have data on this, it was annoying to me to hear people's absolute conviction that (a) people would exercise less and (b) the effect would be so large that it would lead to a decrease in obesity significant enough to offset the number of life-years lost to COVID, especially since the lockdown personally prompted me to start exercising MORE due to my new surplus of idle time. We now have some suggestion that for previously sedentary people, it led to more exercise (my experience) and for previously active people, it led to a decrease. I'd love to see any suggestion that the net effect of this was so colossal as to produce the adverse health outcomes of whose existence you seem so confident. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7312512/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7312512/ > In Australia, an additional 4000-7000 suicides were projected At least in Victoria, it seems like these predictions were unfounded. Of course, that is not going to stop people from repeating this talking point. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-rates-in-victoria-during-covid-19-lockdowns/12602060 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-r...
- disdain_stain 6y ago
  If that suicide prediction was made it must have been early on in the pandemic when no one really what was going to happen. If there was an increase of 4000-7000 that'd mean 2-3 times the ~3,000 suicides that occurred in Australia last year.
  - 0xy 6y ago
    Stop repeating this false claim. I never said it'd increase in a single year (strawman). The Australian Medical Association projects 750-1,000 additional suicides for 5 years. [1] That's an increase of 3,750 - 5,000 additional suicides. Some have projected a 50% increased suicide rate, if that happened for 5 years it'd be 7,500 additional suicides. [1] https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-likely-lead-increased-rates-suicide-and-mental-illness https://ama.com.au/media/joint-statement-covid-19-impact-lik...
alisonatwork 6y ago
I agree with the spirit of your comment, but I would also like to see some hard (not projected) numbers to take it beyond speculation. Where I currently live in BC (Canada), there have been more overdose deaths than coronavirus deaths in 2020[0]. It might be the case that the overdoses have increased precisely because of lockdown. It might also not be the case. That remains to be investigated. I think it's superficially easy to blame suicide, overdose, domestic violence etc on the lockdown, but that's hard to prove, because who's to say it's not a reaction to the overall situation of people dying of a brand new disease? Personally, I really resent lockdown/movement restrictions and I think it's a garbage policy, right back from when I lived in China during the initial outbreak. However, I also have to admit that the countries that locked down seem to have successfully knocked this virus on the head, whereas those that didn't are still suffering the effects. Perhaps a lengthier lockdown pain at the beginning is better than this drawn-out shitshow of half-assed measures that other countries are going through? I dunno. [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/overdose-deaths-bc-august-2020-1.5735247 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/overdose-dea...
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Knocked on the head...for now. All it takes is for one person to start the virus up again and the entire country has to go back into lock down. They're playing a permanant game of country wide lockdown whack a mole with the virus. No one can ever get comfortable again until herd immunity is reached which lockdowns delay.
  - rswail 6y ago
    We all know that we are in "COVID normal" not "normal" until there is a widely delivered effective vaccine. However, it's much easier to test, trace and isolate small outbreaks ("whack a mole") than if its widely spread and uncontrolled. Recently we had a single case of a school child that went back to school before they should have. Two days after he tested positive, the following happened: * The school was closed and deep cleaned * Close contacts and close contacts of those contacts went into quarantine. This ended up being approximately 800 people. * All of them were tested within 48 hours and even further contacts (not "close") were also tested to the point that approximately 5000 tests were done and no additional cases were found. You can't do that tracing and isolation if there is wide community transmission.

loblollyboy 6y ago

Sounds like you’ve gone to the argument of “this can affect fit and healthy people in other ways that we may not even know.” It is clear that the death toll is overwhelmingly skewed toward the elderly. Many of whom died in the first wave as corona prob got into many nursing homes before we knew better. We are now very careful w nursing homes/ elderly, we might see cases go up but as long as you protect them the deaths/ hospitalizations shouldn’t show similar levels to spring 2020. I don’t think you can deny this, so pro-lockdown people are now mainly using this “it can affect young people” argument to avoid cognitive dissonance - I have yet to see proof. I only have seen an article that says there is lung damage after infection which diminishes over the course of weeks. This is what you would expect with any kind of damage but the article had a ridiculous title like “coronavirus may lead to long lasting damage.” Lastly, I see a lot of ambulances these days - it serves as a reminder to check myself. But we’re all probably pretty analytical here and you can’t justify a strict lockdown from a utilitarian standpoint.

Jedd 6y ago
> Sounds like you’ve gone to the argument of “this can affect fit and healthy people in other ways that we may not even know.” Not so much an argument of, than an observation regarding, the unpredictable mid to long term impacts of this infection in the demographic that includes most of the 'it's harmless' crowd. Ie, the 20-40yo, relatively healthy individuals. Most of whom, I hasten to add, are cautious rather than cavalier -- but within which group there are sufficient case studies of severe debilitation lasting very many months, and occasional signs of much longer term damage. Basically my position is 'we don't know' with a consequence of 'let's assume it's worse than we hope'. > It is clear that the death toll is overwhelmingly skewed toward the elderly. Almost definitely. And if you're not in the 'elderly' demographic, or care about people who are, this is probably less worrying for you. > ... similar levels to spring 2020. Spring 2020 started two months ago. I mean, TFA is about Coronavirus in Australia, and Australia is where I am right now, and Spring is what's happening here now. > I don’t think you can deny this, so pro-lockdown people are now mainly using this “it can affect young people” argument to avoid cognitive dissonance - I have yet to see proof. Apologies -- but I do not understand the point you are trying to make here. > I only have seen an article that says there is lung damage after infection which diminishes over the course of weeks. This is what you would expect with any kind of damage but the article had a ridiculous title like “coronavirus may lead to long lasting damage.” Lastly, I see a lot of ambulances these days - it serves as a reminder to check myself. But we’re all probably pretty analytical here and you can’t justify a strict lockdown from a utilitarian standpoint. You mention 'here' without describing where that actually is. And you mention an article that said something you didn't like, but don't provide a reference to that article. Apparently there are ambulances near you. You then conclude that a lockdown is not justifiable, despite TFA being about how lockdowns have effectively halted the spread of SARS-CoV2 within Australia.