Suicide claimed more Japanese lives in October than 10 months of Covid | Hacker News Reader

Suicide claimed more Japanese lives in October than 10 months of Covid

cbsnews.com

68 pointscinquemb31 comments

Clickbait?

The number went up from 1500 last year to 2100 this year, so not a strong increase in absolute terms.

And the only reason why that's more than the Coronavirus deaths is because they have managed the pandemic quite well so far, like - it seems - most Asian countries do.

To put things into perspective, the monthly suicides in Japan from all reasons combined is about the same number as 4% of the monthly US coronavirus deaths.

So while sad, Japan increasing their suicide rate by about 0.005% of their population per year sounds like a good tradeoff against risking a >1% death rate.

That was just for one month though. 1500 last october vs 2100 this October. 2100 is a 40% increase over 1500. That's a pretty drastic change especially when the trend was downward.

If you focus on the absolute rate, going from 0.002% to 0.005% in a year is bad, but you still have a lot of runway before it becomes the worse choice.

I mean of course the lockdown is bad for mental health. But the article (in my opinion) presents is as if Japan made a bad decision. But based on the numbers that are available, their decision was better than the alternative.

Japan never had any lockdown so not sure what alternative you're talking about. There's no decision causing this. Sounds like you defensively interpreted this as an argument against lockdowns and started downplaying the numbers for no reason at all.

They called it "state of emergency" and "government advice to avoid the 3 Cs".

It's not a full lockdown, but it clearly modified people's behavior in a way that reduced covid spread while increasing loneliness.

Hmm, I've read it as suicide is a bigger problem for them that doesn't get the attention needed than suicides spike because of x corona measures (that have been rather light weight compared to western world).

In my opinion, suicide has been a proben in Japan for a long time. It's probably the same underlying issue as Hikkomori and Grasseaters, namely that young men fail to secure their place in the economy, due to the latter being stagnant. There's also people faking their suicide so that they can live an unsuccessful life without their family publicly losing face.

Plus a typical saying is "if a nail sticks out, hit it harder" so I'm not sure you would get community consent for helping the oddballs. At least not from the elderly, most of whom feel like they were the ones who had it though when rebuilding everything after the wars... which led to insane economic growth and a boom of opportunities for them.

So not sure it's correct, but the idea that the elderly worked hard and the youngsters are just lazy is very persuasive. So problems facing the young tend to get less attention by politicians.

That is a 40% increase in absolute terms...

Uh, what? They're apparently fucking not managing the actual pandemic well since any given citizen is at a higher risk of dying of suicide than of covid...

Female cases are at 1/3 of male, but have surged much more significantly.

> Women, who have primary responsibility for childcare, have borne the brunt of pandemic-induced job losses and insecurity. They're also at greater risk of domestic violence, which help centers say has worsened here this year, as it has around the world.

Lockdowns might be justified in larger context, and at its core the issue of domestic abuse is orthogonal to health and safety measures, but let’s remember the silent victims (regardless of gender) around the world who during lockdowns (whether soft or hard) are likely suffering more.

Edited first paragraph since thankfully I have misread the statistic, but I stand by the sentiment.

Japan hasn't really locked down in any real sense of the word though: some local governments have "encouraged" businesses to close, but there are essentially no legal levers to force them to do, much less require people to stay at home.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/Tokyo-gover...

The one thing governments did do was close schools, which wreaked havoc on single parents and dual income families. The complete decimation of the tourist industry plus people staying at home due to general fear of the virus have also caused considerable economic damage, hence the job losses and insecurity.

Soft lockdowns are a problem, too: if the abuser in your home suddenly starts working remotely and is at home 95% of the time, arguably that’s not significantly different from a full lockdown with restricted freedom of movement.

Why do you have to:

1. Incorrectly quote the statistic (two thirds of suicides are male)

2. Come up with a BS narrative (domestic abuse, when japan isn’t even locked down) to explain these statistics after the fact (instead of a falsifiable hypothesis that can be tested)

Funnily enough, this is exactly what is wrong with social science in general.

You believe a sudden 80% increase in a statistic is not newsworthy?

No, if I'm reading the quote correctly:

"To date, more than 17,000 people have taken their own lives this year in Japan. October self-inflicted deaths were up 600 year on year, with female suicides, about a third of the total, surging over 80%."

that's an increase from 110 people in a month to 200 roughly, if the 80% is of the rise in the percentage of the female suicides and not of the total amount, if I read right. Overall it doesn't seem like suicide has exploded, just that Japan had a downwards trend that reversed back up to old levels.

Not very newsworthy at all, imo.

There is a rise in absolute numbers, and an even starker rise when considered against the baseline of the longer-term downwards trend. 80% is not far from doubling the number, which sounds pretty alarming.

I stand corrected regarding statistics (female cases rose more drastically but still do not exceed male cases) and edited my comment to reflect that, but will not take back the general sentiment. Domestic abuse statistics are near impossible to gather reliably, so I am extrapolating from what is known about this issue that current situation likely has made things worse for victims (of any gender).

I am aware that Japan is not under full lockdown, but partial lockdown (businesses like cafes or dance halls closing and owners staying at home) and remote work are a thing. Then, consider places elsewhere in the world where lockdown measures are or had been stricter.

it just sounds like you have a conclusion in mind and you're trying your hardest to make things fit it to be honest

I have a hypothesis which you are more than welcome to go ahead and try to disprove, I’d be only happy if you succeed. Your comment contains no arguments to the contrary, however.

That’s not how it works. That’s also not how science works. The burden of the proof is on whoever is making the claim. Saying “this unsubstantiated claim is true until proven wrong” is a logically fallacy.

This is not physics—electrons do not lie, self-select or suffer. Closing your ears and shouting “domestic abuse is not an issue, because surely we can just ask a bias-neutral perfectly random slice of the population whether they are experiencing or dealing it, and surely everyone can and is willing to answer truthfully” is what helps perpetuate the issue. This is expecting conclusive data where it is impossible to collect (absent total surveillance of households). What is available is anecdotal observations, and enough anecdotal observations can compel one to form a hypothesis.

>October self-inflicted deaths were up 600 year on year, with female suicides, about a third of the total, surging over 80%.

Not quite, about 1/3rd are women, which is 80% higher than last year. Still troubling regardless, of course.

I stand corrected.

Isolation and curtailing the ability to socialize tends to do that. May take a while to fully realize but I bet the ramifications related to mental and emotional well-being will be severe, not even getting into the drug and alcohol abuse addictions that were borne/rekindled during this pandemic.

This isn’t too unexpected. Even in the US with heart disease killing millions and COVID killing a couple hundred thousand over the same time period they still decide that locking down gyms is for the best.

You can get a good training session at home. If only health was contagious.

Why do gyms need to be open?

Because it personally effects this person.

It's an interesting statistic. More than anything it shows to me how covid was exceptionally managed in Japan relative to other countries.

Suicide isn't a single factor event. However, it's our tendency to try to isolate just one factor and then pin a suicide to that.

If we get good at identifying & gauging common forces that drive people to suicide, I suspect we'll find huge swaths of populations that live their lives 80% of the way there.

Hopelessness, I suppose.

Also, these people are very sensitive & even wiser. If these people can be identified, perhaps they can be relocated to favourable new environments to face challenges.

By the same cbsnews: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/unintentional-shootings-guns-ki...

Did you see the difference?

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