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Comment by ortusdux | Hacker News Reader

I work with a covid downplayer that was a covid denier up until a few months ago. They would say that this is proof that almost all deaths are being reported as covid in an attempt to make it seem more serious. I'll just avoid the topic.

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Such a hard argument to make. I tend to stick to the pre-covid argument: if you want safety, stay home.

I dont understand pretending to argue against the science -- of which i'll just point to rosemary kennedys expert medical advice and move on.

I was sort of wondering about this in a different way: How many nursing home suicides were preempted by an actual COVID-19 death? From a quick glance at the data, I don't think it would have accounted for the 5.7% drop, but I think it's worth considering among other factors.

(I'm not a denier or downplayer)

Is nursing home suicide a common thing? It's not something I've ever heard of before (and not something I would have any personal connection to). A couple minutes of googling seems to imply that nursing home rates are actually lower than general population, but maybe I'm not finding the right studies?

I thought maybe people would be generally unhappy in those circumstances but maybe not. As for numbers I'd only looked at age group and yeah it didn't seem to go much higher than middle age.

Again, it was just a thought that crossed my mind and I decided at best it didn't account for the whole drop.

I could see a lot of people being unhappy because they're forced to live in a nursing home. But, when I think about the ways someone would commit suicide, and how many of them are available to a nursing home resident, it just doesn't sound like there's a lot of opportunity. I wonder if there's any good research on the topic.

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