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Comment by laurent92 | Hacker News Reader

There is also the vicious version: Mandating the wearing of helmets for cyclists increases the number of deaths, because of obesity and cardiac diseases due to raising the barrier to cycling.

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I've heard that example many times over the years, but I very much suspect it's and urban myth. Do you know if there really are any serious studies showing this?

There were studies showing that mandatory helmet laws coincide with reduced cycling, and more cycling coincides with fewer deaths

https://theconversation.com/ditching-bike-helmets-laws-bette... Has references to many papers

I’ve personally read it from the book Freakinomics, here is the article pointing to one scientific paper. But it could still be false, you are correct: From my experience, a scientific paper isn’t trustworthy until another paper comes and shows which limits it has.

https://freakonomics.com/2010/01/19/do-bike-helmet-laws-disc...

Thanks for the link. But that only shows that mandatory helmets reduce bicycling a few percent. The leap that it actually increases mortality is still missing.

Think about it this way: if you choose to wear a helmet, you already have done a personal risk evaluation. You are also, with a high probability, an avid cyclist. You are more likely to invest in quality equipment.

On the other hand, if you are getting a helmet because you have to but don't really want to, your selection criteria will be different. You are less likely to invest in quality equipment.

The problem with dodgy headgear is that a badly fitting helmet will not feel right, or align well with your head movements. This in turn means such a helmet is a source of low-grade irritation and distraction - and due to bad fit, may actually limit your field of vision when you turn your head around. The latter clearly increases the wearer's risk.

Hence, a cyclist who wears a helmet only because it's mandatory is (sadly enough) more likely to get into dangerous accidents. They are unable to give their surroundings their full attention, and may also be suffering from ill effects of their chosen gear.

Net effect? More dangerous situations, with smaller safety margins between the cyclist and their surroundings.

Full disclosure: I prefer to wear a good, lightweight helmet that fits snugly and doesn't accidentally impair my vision. I have also experienced badly fitting helmets and consider them hazardous. This is the reason why I am against mandatory cycling helmets - regulation can not guarantee ergonomics, so with mandatory helmets the truth is that more people will be in the traffic with headgear that will make them less safe to themselves, as well as everyone around them.

It’s not hard to make up stories that sound plausible. That doesn’t make them true.

It is true that mandatory helmet laws do not reduce bike fatalities. It would be difficult to come up with a testable hypothesis as to why that is, so this sort of reasoning is as good as it gets.

Mandatory helmets reduce fun and freedom. Laws should not be passed for marginal improvements in safety or small reduction of public costs, in my opinion.

This paper says it increases mortality for that reason:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1368064

There was a TED talk about this, don't know about papers.

https://youtu.be/07o-TASvIxY

You don't need an urban myth when you already have statistics.

Let me rephrase my question: are there reliable statistics that shows that that is the case?

another relevant one: lockdowns cause more deaths because people don't have a job and are depressed.

Edit: According to Elon Musk and others.

The observation from comparing different countries after the fact seems to be that the economy suffers from the epidemic itself (voluntary change of habits plus hospitalizations) as much it does from lockdowns, so the argument is that if you avoided lockdowns then you got both the increased deaths from covid and also the deaths because people lost jobs and are depressed.

The economic issues and the associated death increase was avoided only in countries which successfully managed to limit the spread of disease, which generally involved aggressive early lockdowns.

No doubt, but they also cause fewer deaths from reducing healthcare overload.

My question would then be, what is the natural life expectancy of a suicide or opiate overdose victim, versus that of a person that would have survived COVID only with medical intervention.

We should be looking at deferral of death, not just death count. Death is certain to everyone and I am reluctant to value everyone’s remaining life expectancy equally, at least as far as the healthcare system is concerned.

In the U.K. there’s no evidence of any change in suicide rates in 2020 (it’s normally about 6,000 a year). Registration delays means that we don’t know the numbers for 2020, but early indications are not much change (suicide has been increasing though and is at a record high)

A much bigger issue is the lost of QALYs from lockdown but not from deaths, including the socio-economic impacts.

ONS have a more through report than a Sunday morning post from a phone.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/statementsandletters/estimatingt...

The people who mainly benefitted from lockdown measures are the over 60s

The people who mainly lost out were the under 35s

The recovery plan needs to address this - including fixing the massive wealth disparity. A generation of property owning shareholders who have retired have seen their wealth and income balloon over the last year (and decade). But it won’t, millennials will be screwed.

Life years gained is the measure you're talking about, and that's definitely a good measure to take into consideration.

Now on the other side do lock-downs cause less use of healthcare? And will it result in health-debt? If there is less preventive maintenance done on population will that results increased deaths in future? Thinking of elective surgeries and so on...

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