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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

Kids would be pretty depressed being surrounded by a 8 digit body count in the US too.

Kudos for expressing an unpopular opinion.

I'll express another one: I think the whole thing about "ZOMG! Suicide rates through the roof!!!elevelty!1!" is blown out of proportion, largely thanks to pseudo-news web sites trying to grab clicks on the internet.

The school district where I live put out a press release lamenting an 18% increase in student suicide in 2020. Reading to the end, you find out that the actual numeric increase was something like 2. Two dead kids isn't good in any way. But when the number of suicides reaches a meaningful fraction of the number of COVID deaths, then I'll take it seriously.

Having to stay home for a year is nothing — absolutely nothing — compared with what children had to deal with during previous social upheavals (world wars, and the like).

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> I'll express another one: I think the whole thing about "ZOMG! Suicide rates through the roof!!!elevelty!1!" is blown out of proportion, largely thanks to pseudo-news web sites trying to grab clicks on the internet.

Certain news sites in my state spent 2020 lamenting about how the lockdown is causing overdose deaths to skyrocket. Well, 2021 rolls around and the 2020 overdose death statistics were calculated, and there were about a dozen more overdose deaths in 2020 than in 2019, a change that is statistically insignificant when comparing it to the tens of thousands of overdoses that occurred in the state each year in 2019 and 2020, or to the tens of thousands of people who died from COVID there in 2020.

For whatever reason, the types of people who shared such news in 2020 were not the kind of people who gave two shits about addiction and its effects on others before the pandemic. I say this as a person who has struggled with addiction in the past and has lost numerous people I care about to it. It seems to me that the overdose stats were merely a tool to be used to complain about policy that they disliked.

Frothing covid deniers/lockdown protestors will cling on to anything that lets them win arguments with people on the internet. Assuming these people and the news outlets they frequent are communicating in good faith is a fools errand.

> For whatever reason, the types of people who shared such news in 2020 were not the kind of people who gave two shits about addiction and its effects on others before the pandemic.

You’ll find this is common with a lot of political subjects, I could name a few that come up HN seemingly weekly now. Pick up a cause when it's politically convenient, drop it afterwards. I don’t trust anyone or their intentions when it comes to these sort of things.

>2021 rolls around and the 2020 overdose death statistics were calculated, and there were about a dozen more overdose deaths in 2020 than in 2019

Do you have a citation for this? All statistics I have seen are the exact opposite, showing wildly worse OD stats for 2020 than 2019 [0]

Now some synthetic opioid OD stats could be affected by availability and popularity having little to do with COVID, so lets look at a more historically available drug...

"Overdose deaths involving cocaine also increased by 26.5 percent" [0].

How do you explain that one? And it's not that clubs and raves are finding some new popularity, they've been shut down absent a recent and limited subset of Florida towns.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p1218-overdose-death...

> And it's not that clubs and raves are finding some new popularity

There's been a resurgence in underground raves.

Check your citation, it refers to overdose deaths nationwide between the period of June 2019 until May 2020. The vast majority of those deaths occurred before there were lock downs in the end of March and beginning of April 2020.

Your stats include about a month or two of lock downs at most.

My stats refer to the period between January 2020 and the end of December 2020 in a single state. I'm not about to dox myself, but we can use another state's data to illustrate the same point. In NJ, there were 3,021 overdose deaths in 2019, and in 2020, there were 3,046 overdoses, an increase of only 25 deaths[1], or 0.83%.

> "Overdose deaths involving cocaine also increased by 26.5 percent" [0]. How do you explain that one?

Cocaine and psychostimulants are becoming increasingly popular year-over-year. For example, the CDC reports that psychostimulant overdose deaths increased by 37% in 2017[2], and drug overdose deaths involving cocaine increased by more than 34%.

The CDC reports that from 2009 to 2018, cocaine overdose deaths nearly tripled[3], and between 2014 and 2018, the rate of drug overdose deaths involving cocaine with opioids increased at a faster pace than the rate of cocaine deaths without opioids. If you look at the compiled data[3], between 2015 and 2018, cocaine overdose deaths skyrocketed.

Part of the trend might be related to increasingly adulterated cocaine[4] with fentanyl and designer stimulants over the past few years.

[1] https://whyy.org/articles/n-j-saw-a-slight-uptick-in-drug-ov...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/otherdrugs.html

[3] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db384.htm

[4] https://khn.org/news/not-yesterdays-cocaine-death-toll-risin...

> I'll express another one: I think the whole thing about "ZOMG! Suicide rates through the roof!!!elevelty!1!" is blown out of proportion

Tacky childish mocking of valid concern over the mental health of children, some of whom are truly not doing well, is a garbage take. There are kids crying on a daily basis because of this Zoom shit and the expectations placed on them. While they will (likely) survive, it’s not good for them. I’ve seen kids test scores decline, parents enduring outright mutiny and violence from their children. I’ve seen single parents trying to work from home while their kids, who were already struggling when they had someone to pay attention to them, are screaming at the top of their lungs and breaking things.

Mental health issues can persist even in privileged circumstances, and deserves our concern. The existence of worse suffering doesn’t make current circumstances magically better. In a way, your take feels like the mental health counterpart to ‘it’s just the flu’ style arguments.

I also believe that, during wartime, a lot of children were able to go outside and play with other children.

You need to put it in the context of over 500,000 Americans dead from COVID.

A proportion of which are directly and indirectly caused by the behaviour of young people.

So yes mental health of children is important but for many people not as important as staggering numbers of people dying.

That context makes it seem worse. We are making children lose an entire year of education because 0.1% of Americans died, most of which are old and fat. Should we shut down every year for obesity?

Most of them aren’t losing a year of education. Just face to face education.

Test scores are plummeting, particularly math. Damage like this will snowball for years

So will 500,000 early deaths. The psychological toll on families as well as the economic fallout.

Analyzing the risk factors and suggesting a prioritization is very different than mocking people with valid concerns about children.

The "caused by the behaviour of young people" thing is a weird non-sequitur. Are you suggesting 10-year-olds share culpability for spread caused by the spring break behavior of high-school students?

> Tacky childish mocking of valid concern over the mental health of children, some of whom are truly not doing well, is a garbage take. There are kids crying on a daily basis because of this Zoom shit and the expectations placed on them. While they will (likely) survive, it’s not good for them. I’ve seen kids test scores decline, parents enduring outright mutiny and violence from their children. I’ve seen single parents trying to work from home while their kids, who were already struggling when they had someone to pay attention to them, are screaming at the top of their lungs and breaking things.

Could this be a cultural or geographical thing? Having lived both in Asia and Europe and also visited USA on a number of occasion I find that kids misbehaving in front of parents is more common in EU than Asia.

I was briefly a pandemic student last fall, and am closely connected with a relatively large network of current students who I communicate with regularly (aka my friends).

This is incredibly frustrating to read. Among students, the relevance of this topic - mental health issues spiking do to online curriculum - is painfully obvious. And yes, we are balancing this against the realized danger/negative health consequences of the pandemic.

I understand that this is anecdotal, but it seems that large, robust data sets are not convincing for you.

From what perspective are you writing? Do you have children in school? Do you feel that rising suicidality correlates with a broader issue that suggests some amount of increased suffering in the larger population?

> compared to what children had to deal with during previous social upheavals

Are you saying that we can't aspire to manage crises better than some historical bar? Why does this comparison appear here?

I am genuinely curious, and I hope you understand that my questions are genuine. I just rarely come across a comment that so confidently disagrees with things that are extremely obvious to me. Cheers

Sounds to me they likely don't have children. Even one week at home for my kid is damaging let alone a year. The kids weren't spreading covid to teachers. Teachers could have worn respirators and been fine.

Governments should have kept covid out but harming children in this way to make up for disastrous decisions and behaviours of adults is unacceptable.

> Even one week at home for my kid is damaging let alone a year.

What do you do during school vacations, and summer?

The kid can go outside, go to establishments with friends...

Then blame the clown politicians who failed to adequately handle the virus in 2020.

Kids should have been going outside throughout the pandemic, and seeing the small group that their family had chosen to isolate with. Of course, most families appear to have chosen to keep their kids inside and not have any isolation partners, which is strange but hardly the fault of the schools.

You should figure out why your child's household is so toxic. My son spent about 6 months last year at home. Between daily online classes, video calls with friends/cousins and activities at home. He was missing school/outside but I don't see any lasting negative impact of it.

you're an ass. my child is a toddler. they need to be exploring and interacting with other children, in person, playing, learning and receiving stimuli, not locked at home staring at screens.

Not only unpopular, but probably prematurely incorrect.

"Mental health consequences of the COVID-19 crisis including suicidal behavior are likely to be present for a long time and peak later than the actual pandemic."

https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/article/113/10/707/5857612

I didn't argue that there wouldn't be mental health consequences or that they wouldn't continue past covid. Just that "no mental health consequences" wasn't an option on the table, and not having lockdowns leaves you with 10s millions dead on top of probably worse mental health consequences.

So will this peak be worse then having a normal school year along side a increase in covid deaths?

This was a "trolly problem" situation. The least worse option had to be selected.

For what it is worth, the total COVID death count for under 18 in the US is 200. This includes children with serious risk factors eg cancer, immune disorders, etc

This is just a part of the picture (although it's a good number to see).

You also need to know whether children spread the disease.

Not according to several studies shared by epidemiologists that are parents at my kids' school. The only place they saw spread from children was at schools in Israel early in the pandemic where kids were crammed close together when waiting.

a) There is evidence of children spreading COVID-19, "children under 15 were about half as likely as adults to be infected, and only half as likely as adults to transmit the virus to others". [1]

b) In order to have children at school, you need teachers at school. In order to have teachers at school, you need public transport. Suddenly, you have a significant amount of people moving around spreading the virus.

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/we-now-kn...

A 75% reduction in transmission is as good as many of the vaccines. It is also below the threshold COVID needs to spread through the population.

>I'll express another one: I think the whole thing about "ZOMG! Suicide rates through the roof!!!elevelty!1!" is blown out of proportion, largely thanks to pseudo-news web sites trying to grab clicks on the internet.

You do realize you're replying to a Reuters article about mental health results, not predictions.

Quite a hyperbolic and probably politically inclined comment.

> Having to stay home for a year is nothing — absolutely nothing — compared with what children had to deal with during previous social upheavals (world wars, and the like).

I don't think you can be this confident. Young humans deal particularly poorly with social isolation and those previous upheavals didn't have that as the main feature.

It's also worth pointing out that at sample sizes like that (2), you don't have a sample. You have an anomaly at best.

You have a scale for comparing absolute rates, which is the gist of what the parent is talking about, I think.

> "ZOMG! Suicide rates through the roof!!!elevelty!1!" is blown out of proportion

Wow what a brave thing to do, arguing with a straw man.

> Having to stay home for a year is nothing — absolutely nothing — compared with what children had to deal with during previous social upheavals (world wars, and the like).

Suicide rates actually dropped during the world wars. People are able to handle war much better than social isolation.

Darrell Huff - How To Lie With Statistics[0]. And the first chapter or two of David Spiegelhalter - The Art of Statistics[1] has a good example of absolute vs relative rates/probabilities with respect to medicine. Pretty basic an important issue to understand.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51291.How_to_Lie_with_St... [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43722897-the-art-of-stat...

The false assumption here is that making kids stay home for a year saves a single life from covid.

It doesn't - the kids have a better survival rate than they do from the flu, and the people who are at risk are overwhelmingly not getting it from kids.

Do a cost-benefit analysis. Keeping kids in detention fails it every time.

Couldn’t a kid go to school, pick it up, recover flawlessly since kids do, but give it to their overweight parent who dies? It’s not just the kids…

That is a risk, but that risk needs to be weighed against the known risk of keeping them detained.

I have exactly zero sympathy for the children not being able to go to school in person. Schools aren't in my opinion places where we park children through the day. We have completely overloaded schools to be anything and everything children and it is ridiculous.

If there needs to be outrage, it should be against monopolies like Comcast which has said it will expand data caps to more markets this year. I for one would support life in prison for the current Comcast CEO as well as dismantling the company and making an example out of it.

Because a kid will recover more easily from feeling responsible for their parent's death than they will from extended but finite lockdown?

I keep saying "do the cost-benefit" because you should do the cost-benefit.

One option harms every child and potentially saves some parents' lives.

The other harms practically no children and will likely lead to some more parents dying, although the data is unclear (as death rates in states with much more open schools is not consistently higher).

Harm all kids to save a few parents on the margin...potentially? Do the cost-benefit.

> The other harms practically no children and will likely lead to some more parents dying

Really? You think that a parent dying harms "practically no children"?

For christ's sake, I lost my father at 25 years old (10 years ago) and it still hurts me daily (at 35 now).

Your calculus is just plain fucking cold.

Of course not, but that assumes the first outcome is as likely a result of no-lockdown as the second is of lockdown.

In reality you need to consider probabilities. What if there are thousands of times more kids in the second category than the first?

This is a pattern of thinking that I’ve seen a lot on the pro-lockdown side: reasoning from the axiom that a human being dying has infinite negative utility. While normally a good policy heuristic in practice when all else is equal, it of course can’t be strictly true. If it were, then it would be worth it for everyone in the world to experience unbounded misery if that extended the life of one person by one day.

Clearly that is absurd. So the moral calculus must be more nuanced than “if it saves lives, it must be worth it”.

is there evidence that schools have meaningfully contributed to Covid spread?

https://amp.freep.com/amp/4733689001

"The total number of COVID-19 outbreaks statewide rose this week by 9% over last week to 645. The biggest proportion of outbreaks are tied to the K-12 school setting, Lyon-Callo said.

Children ages 10-19 now have the highest COVID-19 case rate in Michigan, a rate that "is increasing faster than that of other age groups" she said. School-related outbreaks, she explained, aren't all tied to the classroom setting. Many are linked to sports and other gatherings among students."

FWIW, public schools in my state are closed and <19s are still one of the biggest demographics for COVID cases[1]. And that's without the semi-mandatory testing that Michigan has for students.

[1]: Frustratingly, everyone uses different age buckets for reporting. So the state uses ranges like 0-17, 18-50, 50-65 etc. But looking at the individual counties that have a bit more granularity, under 19s appear to be one of the top demographics despite having some of the fewest tests. However I haven't bothered to normalize for population or anything like that

> compared with what children had to deal with during previous social upheavals (world wars, and the like).

You could say that for all of covid. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogen...

>> Kids would be pretty depressed being surrounded by a 8 digit body count in the US too.

> Kudos for expressing an unpopular opinion.

Here's a real unpopular opinion - "Epstein did nothing wrong"

Here's a popular opinion people hide behind saying it's unpopular - "Epstein didn't kill himself"

"unpopular opinion" <==> "I know I'll be downvoted"

Well let's say there was one extra suicide caused by lockdowns. And we know that something like 2/3 of Covid "deaths" are occurring in nursing homes among very elderly who, statistically, might live a year or so longer had they not got Covid.

If we're comparing years of life, isn't one 16 year old worth 60-70 85 year olds in nursing homes? Maybe more because one year in the life of an 84 year old who's already experienced a full life is worth a lot less than a 16 year old going on 17. Societally wise, it's much worse to sacrifice a young person for an 80 year old who's essentially a burden on the rest.

This comparison of the value of a life is morbid, but we've been making decisions like this anyway, even if the media has refused to speak of it openly.

And of course this assumes that all these lockdowns, school closings, etc. made any difference. Again, we can debate that and both sides have data to make their case.

So yeah, maybe one or two suicides and the massive increase of unknown mental health issues weren't a good tradeoff for the unknown number of mostly elderly whose lives were extended a year or two.

Lockdowns have made a big difference. Places like New Zealand have 0 cases. The half lockdowns have lower but mixed results.

An 80 year old has a lot of life in them. Some may have a year or two but others will have 20 or 30 years left.

even if the 80 yr old has 20 yrs of life left, it still means that a 16 yr old is worth at least 3 80 yr olds.

and the 80 yr olds do not contribute to the economy or work, and is indeed a "burden" (sad to say, but they can't really sustain themselves without external resources, as their economic value output is zero). The 16 yr old will likely contribute to society for 40 years at least.

i'm not saying the lockdowns weren't necessary - they were. I'm saying that the costs are high, and society has asked the young to make a sacrifice for the elderly, and yet has not gotten much in return. At least some token appreciation for them is the least that can be done. After all, we praise the servicemen/women for their war efforts, well into their years, and i don't see this as being that different.

The long term damage to those who catch it seems high in many cases including the young. The majority of people getting covid are young so the impact is not understood and not nil.

I'm not sure the young are making anywhere near same sacrifice compared to the war effort in terms of lives and limbs and post war mental effects.

The really young are the future. Anyone in there late teens and 20s is past that point. The work from home training/conditioning the younger generation received will payoff when they reach 20. While your generation may struggle with the isolation by preparing the next generation those issues will disappear reaping larger economic benefits.

In terms of praise, remember all age groups are staying home. Appreciation should first be given to the soldiers (nurses,people who put themselves in danger) but appreciation should be given to everyone who stayed at home, everyone who convinced someone stop doing something that would spread this and everyone who did all they could to stop the spread.

> The long term damage to those who catch it seems high in many cases including the young.

> While your generation may struggle with the isolation by preparing the next generation those issues will disappear reaping larger economic benefits.

It feels inconsistent that you're dismissing the long term effects of one potential problem (isolation) while using the potential harm of another (undemonstrated, theoretical long term damage to young people from COVID infection) to argue your point.

I think the return you get from saving the elderly is the example that is shown to the young. The example shows the young that life when you're elderly isn't miserable and people WILL care for you. Society doesn't take care of the elderly solely for the elderly's sake. The bigger benefit is the example it makes to the younger generations who will be elderly themselves in due time. I can imagine in a society where I see the elderly treated badly, I probably won't have much hope for when id get to that state.

It's like saying "when you're older, we will treat you like shit" and people going back to society and saying "if you're gonna treat me like shit, I'm not going to be a productive member of society like you want me to"

I find it repugnant to define the 'worth' of an individual solely in terms of 'economic output.' The elderly have much to offer society. I think of my own parents, now into their 80s. They planned well, are not an economic burden to their children, and continue to contribute in meaningful ways to their family and their community. Any 'burden' they may be in my life is far outweighed by what they sacrificed and provided for me throughout my life so far.

I'm not sure where to start on this comment other than to say this is the most ghoulish thing I've read on hacker news in a long time.

I hope, that if my "economic output" is zero I don't get ground up into protein so I can have a contribution to society.

A token of appreciation from previous generations is the infrastructure built to benefit from. Like say planting a tree, whose economic output might be zero but you can enjoy it long after the person who planted it died. Not everyone that went before you has mortgaged the future to buy a yacht, maybe show some perspective?

The parent comment specified elderly in nursing homes, which is statistically correct. The 80 year old with 30 years of nursing home life ahead of them is a wealthy anomaly.

New Zealand is an island (two islands) that never had massive community spread. Once you cross into community spread you can't go back to being in a place like New Zealand. In most countries, there was wide community spread before anyone was even thinking about lockdowns.

Also, the average length of stay in a nursing home is under a year. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45950714_Length_of_...

There's a term for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year

And the fact that the majority of COVID-19 deaths are people with very few quality-adjusted life years remaining is almost entirely missed by the media coverage.

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