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Some useful data In the UK in 2019 there were 5,691 suicides, a massive increase and a general increasing trend Provisional data for UK in 2020 showed 845 dea

Some useful data In the UK in 2019 there were 5,691 suicides, a massive increase and a general increasing trend Provisional data for UK in 2020 showed 845 deaths from April-June, or a rate of 3,380, however the data can takes months to come out due to inquests, especially this year as they've been delayed. https://www.itv.com/news/2020-09-01/male-suicide-rate-highest-in-twenty-years-new-data-shows https://www.itv.com/news/2020-09-01/male-suicide-rate-highes... However even if suicide rates had doubled. In the UK in 2020 there have been 75,000 plus excess deaths. Based on the observed IFR, if Covid had run wild this would be more like 600,000 -- assuming no health care system collapse (which would have happened, and still might) While suicide is a tragedy, and in the UK a worryingly high one, the effects of covid (which aren't all due to lockdowns) would likely have increased it (economic downturns cause suicide). In any case, it's a very small number compared with the excess deaths that covid causes.

abduhl 6y ago
Most people don't lose their jobs/businesses/careers and kill themselves the next day or even the next month, but that doesn't mean that their eventual decline into depression and suicide wasn't triggered by that loss. And not to get into such a charged discussion, but it's also important to look at the ages of those dying of COVID versus those dying because of how we reacted to COVID.
- iso1631 6y ago
  Yes the effects may last a long time, much of the effects should be mittigated by government though (suicide is often because of financial issues - something that governments can fix by issuing a new-deal style work program post vaccination to reboot the economy) However if Covid ran wild and infected 70% of the UK, and assuming no healthcare collapse, based on medium IFR figures from https://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/now-casting/ https://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/now-casting/ There would be 38,413 deaths for those age 45-64 and 3,037 deaths for those age 25-44 In addition to the 100k 65-74 year olds, and the 350k 75+ Even if you felt those were acceptable figures, how would you deal with healthcare collapse? Decide to withhold hospital treatment from over 65s?
  - abduhl 6y ago
    A government known for its austerity measures is going to mitigate its citizens' financial issues? I find that hard to believe. I'm not going to engage with someone over the internet about the weighing of people's quality of life years or which side of the fence I come down on there. My post was merely pointing out that extrapolating a suicide rate for 2Q 2020 to the total suicide death number was in error.
    - avianlyric 6y ago
      > A government known for its austerity measures is going to mitigate its citizens' financial issues? At least it’s possible. Last I checked death was impossible to mitigate.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - crateandarrow 6y ago
    I don’t mean to diminish the gravity of such numbers but don’t projections like this ignore asymptomatic cases? How many of those projected to die here have already contacted it but are immune for whatever reason and never got tested? The death rates across age ranges can only account for confirmed deaths and cases in that range, no? Without testing every single person in an age range we can’t make accurate projections because we can’t know the percentage of “immune” people, no?
    - thomasz 6y ago
      Yes, they do. There is obviously some guesswork involved, but after several seroprevalence studies, these arguments can be laid to rest. There is no giant iceberg of undetected cases, we’re still in the beginning of the pandemic, and IFR is frighteningly high. Especially in older populations.
    - saberdancer 6y ago
      They don't ignore asymptomatic cases. IFR is calculated using symptomatic and asymptomatic cases. It's total % of people that die if they get infected, symptomatic or not. Studies are showing Covid-19 has IFR of 0.5-1% in western world (due to age). This means if 100% of England got infected, 0.5 to 1% would die. This is not counting that if hospitals got overwhelmed, IFR would increase.
- CraigJPerry 6y ago
  >> that doesn't mean that their eventual decline into depression and suicide wasn't triggered by that loss It's not just loss of jobs/businesses/careers - loss of loved ones to COVID can be a cause of depression too. Allowing more COVID deaths could increase suicides.
- onethought 6y ago
  Why is it important to look at the age? You are implying that human life degrades in value as people age. To take your view to it's logical conclusion: We should harvest living old peoples organs to save babies.
  - AnHonestComment 6y ago
    QALY is standard medical practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year I understand it makes people squeamish, but the medical profession triages lives and decides treatments every day. Doing something QALY negative is malpractice — and lockdowns are QALY negative because they harm the young to save the old/infirm.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      FYI your comments are showing as dead by default, time for a new account.
    - onethought 6y ago
      But that is to decide on resource allocation, i.e: I have 2 people, and 1 me, which one do I help. That isn't used by governments to decide on health or economic policy. Else we'd ban old people from hospitals (and save trillions in the process!) and in general make their lives a misery (high tax, low benefits) because their "value" would be approaching 0.
      - henrikschroder 6y ago
        Uh, QALY is definitely used by governments to decide on health and economic policy, but not in the absurd utilitarian way you're imagining. For example, it's used to prioritize people in transplant queues. The more "use" you can get out of a new organ, the more you'll be prioritized, but it's not the only decider.
        onethought 6y ago
- jandrewrogers 6y ago
  FWIW, I personally know a couple very successful restauranteurs who descended into despondency and alcoholism to the point where they are effectively non-functional and will likely never open a restaurant again. These people aren’t accounted for in the damage but they are shadows of their former contributions to society. These people aren’t dead but they are asymptotically close to it for all practical purposes. Even if things opened up tomorrow they would have nowhere to go.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
jozvolskyef 6y ago
The British Office for National Statistics concludes that the impact of the lockdown in terms of QALY (quality-adjusted life year) is higher than that of the disease itself: > from March 2020 to more than five years from now, the impacts of lockdown and a resulting recession are estimated to reduce England’s health by over 970,000 QALYs – the health impacts of contracting COVID-19 are still unclear in the long term, but between March 2020 and March 2021, these represent 570,000 lost QALYs[1] That being said, > While these negative health impacts of lockdown exceed the impacts of COVID-19 directly, they are much smaller than the negative impacts estimated for a scenario in which these measures are not in place; without these mitigations, the impact of direct COVID-19 deaths alone on both mortality and morbidity would be much higher – an estimated 439,000 excess deaths resulting from COVID-19, and 3,000,000 QALYs lost.[1] [1]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/statementsandletters/estimatingtheimpactsofcoronavirusonenglandsmortalityandmorbidity https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/statementsandletters/estimatingt...
- iso1631 6y ago
  So what you mean to say is The British Office for National Statistics concludes that the impact of the covid with lockdown in terms of QALY (quality-adjusted life year) is far lower than impact of covid without lockdown
  - jozvolskyef 6y ago
    That is what I said in the second half of my comment. These two statements are not contradictory. To be precise, the cost of lockdown is 1/3 of the cost of unmitigated covid. The cost of lockdown is mostly borne by the young and healthy while the cost of non-lockdown is mostly borne by the vulnerable. It is a trolley problem.
    - onethought 6y ago
      But the cost borne is very different. One the cost is death. The other the cost is hardship... how can you compare the two?
yodsanklai 6y ago
> Based on the observed IFR, if Covid had run wild this would be more like 600,000 I think this is largely over-estimated. Such high fatality rate hasn't happened anywhere in the world, regardless of the lockdown policy or absence thereof. That being said, I concede that this wasn't known at the time of the first wave when strict lockdowns were put in place. Another point to take into account is that the vast majority of covid victims had very short remaining life expectancy. Not to say that their death don't count, but it is to be taken into account when comparing with suicides. Rather than number of deaths, maybe we could count number of years of life lost.
- TylerE 6y ago
  You’re not taking into account ICU capacity. Many hospitals are basically full NOW, if the case rate, say, doubled you’re going to have marginal cases dieing because they don’t have access to basic care like oxygen.
  - dguaraglia 6y ago
    Bingo. The problem with talking about Covid-19 casualties is there's no argument that'll convince the skeptics: mortality rates are relatively high when we still have hospital capacity, imagine if we had double or triple the number of patients to ICU/hospital capacity? Well... then they'd say that people aren't really dying of Covid-19, but 'from preconditions'... which 45% of the population have at least one of. It's a thankless task.
- robocat 6y ago
  > Another point to take into account is that the vast majority of covid victims had very short remaining life expectancy. Source? The first result I found said “for each person in the U.S. who died after contracting COVID-19, an average of nearly 10 years of life had been lost.” From: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200923124557.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200923124557.h... 10 years lost... I know averages are difficult, but the population of deaths is heavily skewed towards the elderly which implies that most covid victims lost many years.
- deleted 6y ago
Trasmatta 6y ago
> While suicide is a tragedy, and in the UK a worryingly high one, the effects of covid (which aren't all due to lockdowns) would likely have increased it (economic downturns cause suicide). This is a good point that I think people miss. The equation isn't as simple as "less lockdowns == less suicides". If the pandemic rages even worse, there are a ton of second order effects that could also trigger increasing suicide rates. Family members or friends dying to COVID, getting long term COVID complications yourself, just the emotional stress of hearing about so many deaths, economic impact. How do we know that there would have been less suicide if there had been no lockdowns? We don't, and expressing it just as a trolley problem is an oversimplification.
sgustard 6y ago
Mentally I've compared this experience to the Blitz, which my grandparents lived through. Heightened fear of death or injury striking without warning; massive changes to daily routines; no timeline for how long it would endure but the likelihood of it lasting for years. Some people were psychologically prepared to cope and some weren't.

abduhl 6y ago

Most people don't lose their jobs/businesses/careers and kill themselves the next day or even the next month, but that doesn't mean that their eventual decline into depression and suicide wasn't triggered by that loss. And not to get into such a charged discussion, but it's also important to look at the ages of those dying of COVID versus those dying because of how we reacted to COVID.

iso1631 6y ago
Yes the effects may last a long time, much of the effects should be mittigated by government though (suicide is often because of financial issues - something that governments can fix by issuing a new-deal style work program post vaccination to reboot the economy) However if Covid ran wild and infected 70% of the UK, and assuming no healthcare collapse, based on medium IFR figures from https://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/now-casting/ https://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/now-casting/ There would be 38,413 deaths for those age 45-64 and 3,037 deaths for those age 25-44 In addition to the 100k 65-74 year olds, and the 350k 75+ Even if you felt those were acceptable figures, how would you deal with healthcare collapse? Decide to withhold hospital treatment from over 65s?
- abduhl 6y ago
  A government known for its austerity measures is going to mitigate its citizens' financial issues? I find that hard to believe. I'm not going to engage with someone over the internet about the weighing of people's quality of life years or which side of the fence I come down on there. My post was merely pointing out that extrapolating a suicide rate for 2Q 2020 to the total suicide death number was in error.
  - avianlyric 6y ago
    > A government known for its austerity measures is going to mitigate its citizens' financial issues? At least it’s possible. Last I checked death was impossible to mitigate.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- crateandarrow 6y ago
  I don’t mean to diminish the gravity of such numbers but don’t projections like this ignore asymptomatic cases? How many of those projected to die here have already contacted it but are immune for whatever reason and never got tested? The death rates across age ranges can only account for confirmed deaths and cases in that range, no? Without testing every single person in an age range we can’t make accurate projections because we can’t know the percentage of “immune” people, no?
  - thomasz 6y ago
    Yes, they do. There is obviously some guesswork involved, but after several seroprevalence studies, these arguments can be laid to rest. There is no giant iceberg of undetected cases, we’re still in the beginning of the pandemic, and IFR is frighteningly high. Especially in older populations.
  - saberdancer 6y ago
    They don't ignore asymptomatic cases. IFR is calculated using symptomatic and asymptomatic cases. It's total % of people that die if they get infected, symptomatic or not. Studies are showing Covid-19 has IFR of 0.5-1% in western world (due to age). This means if 100% of England got infected, 0.5 to 1% would die. This is not counting that if hospitals got overwhelmed, IFR would increase.
CraigJPerry 6y ago
>> that doesn't mean that their eventual decline into depression and suicide wasn't triggered by that loss It's not just loss of jobs/businesses/careers - loss of loved ones to COVID can be a cause of depression too. Allowing more COVID deaths could increase suicides.
onethought 6y ago
Why is it important to look at the age? You are implying that human life degrades in value as people age. To take your view to it's logical conclusion: We should harvest living old peoples organs to save babies.
- AnHonestComment 6y ago
  QALY is standard medical practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year I understand it makes people squeamish, but the medical profession triages lives and decides treatments every day. Doing something QALY negative is malpractice — and lockdowns are QALY negative because they harm the young to save the old/infirm.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    FYI your comments are showing as dead by default, time for a new account.
  - onethought 6y ago
    But that is to decide on resource allocation, i.e: I have 2 people, and 1 me, which one do I help. That isn't used by governments to decide on health or economic policy. Else we'd ban old people from hospitals (and save trillions in the process!) and in general make their lives a misery (high tax, low benefits) because their "value" would be approaching 0.
    - henrikschroder 6y ago
      Uh, QALY is definitely used by governments to decide on health and economic policy, but not in the absurd utilitarian way you're imagining. For example, it's used to prioritize people in transplant queues. The more "use" you can get out of a new organ, the more you'll be prioritized, but it's not the only decider.
      - onethought 6y ago
jandrewrogers 6y ago
FWIW, I personally know a couple very successful restauranteurs who descended into despondency and alcoholism to the point where they are effectively non-functional and will likely never open a restaurant again. These people aren’t accounted for in the damage but they are shadows of their former contributions to society. These people aren’t dead but they are asymptotically close to it for all practical purposes. Even if things opened up tomorrow they would have nowhere to go.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

jozvolskyef 6y ago

The British Office for National Statistics concludes that the impact of the lockdown in terms of QALY (quality-adjusted life year) is higher than that of the disease itself: > from March 2020 to more than five years from now, the impacts of lockdown and a resulting recession are estimated to reduce England’s health by over 970,000 QALYs – the health impacts of contracting COVID-19 are still unclear in the long term, but between March 2020 and March 2021, these represent 570,000 lost QALYs[1] That being said, > While these negative health impacts of lockdown exceed the impacts of COVID-19 directly, they are much smaller than the negative impacts estimated for a scenario in which these measures are not in place; without these mitigations, the impact of direct COVID-19 deaths alone on both mortality and morbidity would be much higher – an estimated 439,000 excess deaths resulting from COVID-19, and 3,000,000 QALYs lost.[1] [1]: https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/statementsandletters/estimatingtheimpactsofcoronavirusonenglandsmortalityandmorbidity https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/statementsandletters/estimatingt...

iso1631 6y ago
So what you mean to say is The British Office for National Statistics concludes that the impact of the covid with lockdown in terms of QALY (quality-adjusted life year) is far lower than impact of covid without lockdown
- jozvolskyef 6y ago
  That is what I said in the second half of my comment. These two statements are not contradictory. To be precise, the cost of lockdown is 1/3 of the cost of unmitigated covid. The cost of lockdown is mostly borne by the young and healthy while the cost of non-lockdown is mostly borne by the vulnerable. It is a trolley problem.
  - onethought 6y ago
    But the cost borne is very different. One the cost is death. The other the cost is hardship... how can you compare the two?

yodsanklai 6y ago

> Based on the observed IFR, if Covid had run wild this would be more like 600,000 I think this is largely over-estimated. Such high fatality rate hasn't happened anywhere in the world, regardless of the lockdown policy or absence thereof. That being said, I concede that this wasn't known at the time of the first wave when strict lockdowns were put in place. Another point to take into account is that the vast majority of covid victims had very short remaining life expectancy. Not to say that their death don't count, but it is to be taken into account when comparing with suicides. Rather than number of deaths, maybe we could count number of years of life lost.

TylerE 6y ago
You’re not taking into account ICU capacity. Many hospitals are basically full NOW, if the case rate, say, doubled you’re going to have marginal cases dieing because they don’t have access to basic care like oxygen.
- dguaraglia 6y ago
  Bingo. The problem with talking about Covid-19 casualties is there's no argument that'll convince the skeptics: mortality rates are relatively high when we still have hospital capacity, imagine if we had double or triple the number of patients to ICU/hospital capacity? Well... then they'd say that people aren't really dying of Covid-19, but 'from preconditions'... which 45% of the population have at least one of. It's a thankless task.
robocat 6y ago
> Another point to take into account is that the vast majority of covid victims had very short remaining life expectancy. Source? The first result I found said “for each person in the U.S. who died after contracting COVID-19, an average of nearly 10 years of life had been lost.” From: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200923124557.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/09/200923124557.h... 10 years lost... I know averages are difficult, but the population of deaths is heavily skewed towards the elderly which implies that most covid victims lost many years.
deleted 6y ago

Trasmatta 6y ago

> While suicide is a tragedy, and in the UK a worryingly high one, the effects of covid (which aren't all due to lockdowns) would likely have increased it (economic downturns cause suicide). This is a good point that I think people miss. The equation isn't as simple as "less lockdowns == less suicides". If the pandemic rages even worse, there are a ton of second order effects that could also trigger increasing suicide rates. Family members or friends dying to COVID, getting long term COVID complications yourself, just the emotional stress of hearing about so many deaths, economic impact. How do we know that there would have been less suicide if there had been no lockdowns? We don't, and expressing it just as a trolley problem is an oversimplification.

sgustard 6y ago

Mentally I've compared this experience to the Blitz, which my grandparents lived through. Heightened fear of death or injury striking without warning; massive changes to daily routines; no timeline for how long it would endure but the likelihood of it lasting for years. Some people were psychologically prepared to cope and some weren't.