Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Ontario shut down non-urgent health services in the spring. Now hospitals are seeing many more patients with advanced cancers

Reason number 1,000,003 on why lockdowns are bad.

 

Don't know why y'all continue to respond to such n such poster. I've put a grand total of two people on ignore in over 20 years on GC. Being relieved of that empty rhetoric has made this thread readable. Bless your hearts, but you're much better off ignoring.

 

I asked 3 fairly specific questions, was your post an attempt to answer any one of them? If so, please quote the sections that answer them.

 

1. Are suicides on the rise during the COVID-19 pandemic? | KXAN Austin

That should cover that one. But yes, we will have to wait for the numbers next year. But one can extrapolate that suicides and drug overdoses will be up significantly this year. Only someone very partisan would argue otherwise.

2. Suicides going up is huge considering it is the second leading cause of death for young adults. Contrast that with the 99.998 survival rate for that age group if infected.

3. Considering the job loss, the depression people feel from not interacting with others, the increase in drug and alcohol use, I think its a reasonable conclusion to say the shutdown has affected people worse than the pandemic itself, although the non stop fear that the MSM paints Covid like a death sentence for sure affects people psychologically. The studies on this will be fascinating.

 

If you're trying to stop a contagion, you don't voluntarily import more of it. But I love how the few responses I received to this glossed over the fact that the governors are largely standing pat as we have this "explosion" of new cases and that is because 1. more restrictions will simply prolong the contagion and hurt the local economy; 2. there is zero political will to impose more restrictions right before an election and probably to some degree after the election (no matter who wins).

 

I can’t thank you enough for doing this. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

 

What you are actually arguing for is a lockdown, and you don’t even know it.

A traveler coming from almost anywhere in the world would be LESS likely than an American to be carrying the virus. At this point, the incremental foreign traveler truly has zero mathematical impact on the spread of the virus in this country, that is because we have consistently been one of the most infected countries per capita. However that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to travel, actually it’s borderline ridiculous, which is why much of the world has advised their people to not visit the U.S. (at minimum), or even taken further steps barring U.S tourism or tourists.

Banning travel from our end is just an embarrassing exercise in futility, and in most cases probably just retaliation for countries that already ban U.S. tourism coming or going.

 

After catching up on the mind numbing back and forth of this thread over the past few days, a few things jump out.
People are obsessed that lockdowns don't help, but I don't know any place in the US that is in lockdown.
Also, for all the bitching about measures such as mask wearing and such that has gone on for the past 8 months, if these people would just stop bitching and follow a few basic rules, the US would be in a substantially different place right now. Bunch of selfish, whiney Aholes holding this country back. Talk about snowflakes.

 

1) How can it "cover that one" if we still have to wait for numbers?

2) Possible, but again, no numbers

3) It's not reasonable to conclude anything. It's reasonable to hypothesize, because hypotheses only need logic and I don't deny that your argument has logic to it, but conclusions need evidence.

I'm not saying that what you contend isn't true, simply that we need more evidence.

 

Yeah, so far the only paper in the US that I have seen is this one from Brigham/Harvard and Yale researchers, showing no increase from expected suicides during the period of actual lockdown from March-May in Massachusetts (Massachusetts was hit hardest in the initial surge).

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.20.20215343v1.full.pdf

The other paper that I have seen that actually put numbers on this issue was from researchers at McGill and came from data from Peru. They found that traffic accidents, suicides, homicides, and other accidental deaths all saw a dramatic decline after the lockdown was implemented. However, each of the forms of death previously had a positive slope before the lockdown (i.e., more people were dying of each of those causes in the past year prior to the event) and male suicides have seen an increase in the slope, suggesting that the downward shift may eventually be gone if that effect persists for a long enough period of time. The other forms of deaths and suicide deaths in women have not seen a different slope from the now lower point post-lockdown from the slope that existed prior to the lockdown.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.11.20150193v1.full.pdf

A smaller study looked at suicides and ideation in the UK as well. Only 3K participants, but it showed an increase in suicidal ideation (they also looked at self-harm, but didn't appear to analyze differences there given the rarity of self-harm in a sample of 3K or so participants) over subsequent waves of the response from March 31-May 11, although they found decreases in defeat and entrapment over the three waves and increases in wellbeing over the three waves.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/serv..._uk_covid19_mental_health_wellbeing_study.pdf

Obviously, there are limitations to each of these studies (both of the first two studies are relatively local and based on very short-time series; the second study has a self-selection panel of people, which may impact the results).

 

So of these people committing suicide, what is the evidence that it is a “lockdown” causing the stress? There is a worldwide pandemic underway. That is the real source of the stress.

Even if no precautions (masks, distancing) were being taken by anyone, the stress of going out to stores and restaurants would still be there. The fear of going out would still be there. Probably even worse as cases and fatalities increase.

 

As was the March lockdown. As would any future lockdown be. That was my entire point. I'm not arguing that we should have a travel ban on Europe. And if you think Americans are going to be okay with another March-style lockdown, that is some mad reefer you're smoking over there.

 

Yes, because the stress of losing your job or potentially losing your job doesn't outweigh "going out". Seriously, I think some of you live in a bubble. How out of touch can you be? And if you know anybody who works in the psychiatry field, they will quickly tell you they saw a sharp increase depression among patients and marital problems as well. It's a very real thing and should not be diminished.

 

It is a good question. The right answer is likely to be complex, as it is likely that lockdowns have complex effects on different negative psychological issues. So, for exmaple, while something like financial stress is likely to increase for most (although not all) people, there are widely disparate effects for people with other stressors. Anecdotally, some people with PTSD have had differing effects, as it is easier to control your environment, which is crucial for PTSD, but can also, in theory, increase uncertainty in the world, which is potentially harmful. The study before showed that the effects of things like defeat and entrapment tended to disipate over time, although their initial effects may cause problems in the short term.

Also, you need to look into the impacts on monitoring. It could have a negative effect, where people go home and hide from others, or it could have a positive effect, where loved ones worry more about people that they knew were in trouble given the focus on mental health and the lack of other distractions. So, again, it is likely complex.

Not the sort of thing that lends itself to easy answers (as usual).

 

Studies Point To Big Drop In COVID-19 Death Rates

Good news.

 

Jaguars 23 year old RB originally diagnosed in August still fighting covid and ruled out for season

23-year-old Jaguars running back who has COVID-19 has been hospitalized twice and already ruled out for the rest of the season

Jacksonville Jaguars running back Ryquell Armstead has had an unexpected tough battle with COVID-19 and has been ruled out for the rest of the season, according to ESPN's Adam Schefter.

The 23-year-old Armstead was put on the NFL's reserve/COVID-19 list on August 21, during training camp. He came off the list briefly and then was placed back on it again in early September.

Since then, according to Schefter, Armstead has been hospitalized twice with "significant" upper-respiratory issues and a "variety of complications."