"Died of lockdown" is attributing causation in a way that this paper does not attempt to justify. Even if there is a causal relationship, there's not enough ev

"Died of lockdown" is attributing causation in a way that this paper does not attempt to justify. Even if there is a causal relationship, there's not enough evidence to conclude that it's a direct causal relationship between lockdown and suicide, let alone between masks/testing and suicide (what?). For instance, I'd bet that at least a few of the excess deaths are from harmful parents - whether physically abusive, intolerant of something about their kid's identity, etc. In my social circles I know a whole lot of people who have a strained if not nonexistent relationship with their parents and for whom leaving home for college quite literally saved their life. I can easily see a loss of hope for students in their final years of high school, and the study also includes 18-25-year-olds - which includes students who had already moved to dorms and were then sent home. These kids probably could have survived lockdown just fine, were they living on their own or in a supportive household. They just didn't survive their parents. The causal relationship is that we instituted lockdown without any regard for harmful family situations. It seems both possible and ethical to study statements made by people who died by suicide (suicide notes, public social media posts, statements to friends, etc.), and I think that would be a lot more scientifically useful for the cause of preventing suicide than assuming that the reason was that they didn't like lockdown per se.