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/
> 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-r...
However, the effect of these needs to be balanced against the effect of not controlling the spread of COVID. There were also other benefits, for example, much lower influenza and other winter diseases due to lack of contact and masks and social distancing.
By controlling and reducing the number of cases, we had lower rates and now almost eliminated hospitalizations. There were interruptions in "elective" surgeries, but required surgery and hospitalization for other disease suffered much less than it could have.
Both my and my wife's weight went up. I was able to beat it, she wasn't, so she's about 8kg heavier now than she was in February. The only exercise I get now is half an hour of stationary bike a day. I used to seriously lift weights 4-5 days a week, in addition to it.
It's not even a question for anyone not completely brainwashed that lockdowns are very psychologically hard on people.
I find that an unnecessary slight. Since that topic is very taboo, you won't be able to read about it in mainstream media sources, but only in opposition sources and professional journals. Attacking it on those grounds is weak.
It would be extremely surprising if a multi-month lockdown didn't have a death toll, "most likely" makes it sound like that's probable but remains to be seen. I don't think that's a reasonable position given all we know about the cost of policies, mental health and economic depression.
The argument shouldn't be "lockdown is painless" (because it obviously isn't), it has to be "no lockdown is more painful". We won't be able to tell whether it's true for quite some time, but there's a good argument for erring on the side of caution.
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-lik...
I specifically said Australia, and your claim is incorrect according to the Australian Medical Association which forecasts 750-1,000 additional suicides for 5 years. [1] I can't find my original source for that figure but the AMA source still proves my point.
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7312512
Belgium did not have a Melbourne-tier lockdown at any stage. Why would it be comparable?
>But the specific points you're making are very dubious and also very recognisable as the effect of consuming specific kinds of media.
Ah yes, "specific kinds of media" like the Australian Medical Association. Those darned far right Murdoch-leaning doctors.
Your own source proves my point in fact. [2]
>"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-lik...
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-r...
What are you talking about? Yes we did. Curfew, essential services only, no non-essential travel, etc etc.
Above all of that, Melbourne has had one of the longest lockdowns globally (surpassing Wuhan in length).
[1] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/suicide-an...
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/no-spike-in-suicide-r...
>"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-lik...
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.
Irreparably? Using restaurants is a terrible metric since most of those fail even in a booming economy. I think restaurants and hospitality will be one of the fastest areas to recover once people feel it's safe.
Remember that Australia has not had a financial recession for 25+ years. Recession for any reason causes bankruptcies which leads to those personal impacts.
But the lockdown has meant that our economy will be closer back to "normal" earlier than it would have been. Our primary markets in Asia (in particular China) are all recovering rapidly.
So not sure what your argument is here. Yes, all of the effects you state are correct. However, what was the alternative?
Some of these restaurants had $20,000/week expenses and the government was offering significantly less than that in support.
>But the lockdown has meant that our economy will be closer back to "normal" earlier than it would have been
That sounds like wild speculation. Thousands of businesses closed permanently. Sure, giant banks and huge corporations that were specifically bailed out by government will be more-or-less fine. But that family restaurant? They went out of business months ago.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-10/melbourne-second-coro...
But all that is beside the point, which was suicides from lockdown effects will be substantially higher than virus deaths currently, according to Australian Medical Association modelling. I don't think you attempted to refute that with any counter-evidence (beyond your speculation).
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)
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.
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.
This is False (obviously).
Germany: 126 deaths by million
Portugal: 247
France: 549
Sweden: 580
Spain: 764
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-dea...
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.
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.
People go to the grocery store and come into contact with hundreds of people in an hour.
The infectious dose of COVID is not known, but believed to be somewhere in the several hundred to a thousand viruses range.
An infected person breathing normally near you might expose you to something like 20 or 30 per minute (breath is normally expelled with low force, so it doesn't contain viruses from the lower parts of the respiratory tract). Talking might do around 200 per minute. A cough or sneeze can do millions.
Thus, if I have COVID and go shopping at the same time you do, wearing a mask, and don't cough or sneeze pretty much in your face when we happen to pass each other, you almost certainly are not going to get it from me, and it makes little difference for contact tracers to find you.
It is the people that I spend a few minutes talking face to face to or that I spend a long time near that contact tracers need to find.
Note that it doesn't depend on who you get the viruses from. If a lot of people in the grocery store have it, then even though you might only get a handful of viruses from each person you pass you still might accumulate an infectious dose during your time in the store.
To control it, you need to get the number of infections down enough that people won't be getting it from casual transitory contact, like when grocery shopping, and people need to limit situations that involve more extended contact to times/places where the people they have extended contact with can be identified and traced, and need to limit the frequency of those events so that there is time for contact tracing to work.
You could have stopped there.
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-lik...