You can check the study yourself (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2790491 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2790491). They sim

You can check the study yourself (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2790491 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2790491). They simply looked at alcohol-related mortality across the entire US in 2019, 2020, and provisional data from the first half of 2021. There is no basis on which to make a statement comparing localities that implemented strict lockdowns versus those implemented less strict lockdowns. The only event that definitely affected the entire country equally is "the pandemic" broadly. They can't draw conclusions the data don't support just to make it more palatable to you. Saying this should definitely be studied doesn't mean every single paper that gets published needs to only study this. It's not even clear it's really possible to get the data. How do you measure the strictness of different responses? Do municipalities publish alcohol mortality individually or is only the aggregate data available?