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Comment by psychlops | Hacker News Reader

I notice that "the pandemic" is quickly found as the root cause and no analysis at all is done to identify if the response to the pandemic is to be implicated as well.

I'd wager that waking up one day and discovering that one's job is not essential might be stressful. Being forbidden from going to the beaches and parks might have contributed. The stress of learned helplessness from countless bureaucratic decisions later proven baseless could be analyzed as well.

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That’s an aritificially hostile take, isn’t it?

Most people read “the pandemic” as the global event that started around the beginning of 2020 and certainly that’s how this article and it’s title are using it.

Even if you don’t read the article, it feels like a leap to assume that they’re suggesting that the virus itself somehow made people drink more irresponsibly or made people collectively more vulnerable to alcohol. Has anyone suggested that? Would anyone?

Of course it’s referring to the totality of the experience: the virus, the anxiety, the necessary closures, the precautionary mandates and other parts of “the response”, etc etc

I'd say it's mainly that those who have been heavily advocating all of the lockdown measures throughout the pandemic have behaved more or less like there were no side effects and we should do them for the greater good (basically virtue signaling). The other isle has advocated that maybe we shouldn't cause that kind of turmoil in society just to spare a few years of lifespan of the elderly (which is a harsh take but doesn't make it untrue).

And just thinking about stupid concepts like outdoor masking makes me want to crack open a bottle of vodka.

> those who have been heavily advocating all of the lockdown measures throughout the pandemic have behaved more or less like there were no side effects

That's so alien to me.

I don't know who gabs around the water cooler with you, but I've never met a person who would say that and can't imagine that many involved officials would. The exception really only being people who are known for big theatrics, and those aren't good people to measure others by for any politicized issue.

Most people I've known and most people I've seen have argued that it was a hard governance problem with no painless paths through it, but that there was convincing evidence (to them) that the side effects of issuing precautionary guidance/mandates were more bearable than the catastrophic effects of less action.

But obviously, we must be moving around and watching/reading things in very different circles.

While outdoor masking is silly, the your rage seems disproportionate if that is the source. I've been accused of 'virtue signaling' during the pandemic, but supporting family members whose immune systems were largely disable from chemotherapy makes putting a mask on seem like a small sacrifice. Your take on 'spare a few years of lifespan' is perhaps not untrue, but is an easy 'internet take' when there is anonymity. It is less cute when one is face-to-face with the disposable person, or to someone who watched a family member die.

I'd find it harder to tell a young healthy person they had to lose years of life, their job, their house, than to tell a 70 year old or obese person we aren't doing that to spare them.

And you're right, rage is the correct word. Me and lots of others are enraged that years of life were taken. The old people in America already got enough at everybody else's expense. I want my 2 years back and I won't stop being angry until I get it. And a whole lot of people my age feel the same.

“Old people in America” were heavily impacted but. I can tell you don’t work in health care, as they aren’t the only people that suffered either directly or indirectly . My grandfather, who served in WWII until he was shot, never said he “wanted his time back”(inherently flawed logic). Years of his life and a chunk of his health was taken for something he hated doing but needed to be done. My other grandfather left Eastern Europe in the 1930s and I can remember friends of his that had numbers tattooed on their arms— my aunt was permanently childless for reason I didn’t learn until I was older. Since forever, senseless things happen to people. Some become victims.. Wearing masks and no dinner-and-a-movie sucks. Loss of jobs is real. In the absence if mask mandates and shut-downs, would the economy have flourished under the pandemic? I dont know. I am confident it wouldn’t have been a panacea for the young or old. We have it really good here, in the context of what is going on in Europe right now I think about this a lot. I hope you find happiness.

You're correct, but also, "the pandemic" in that sense is so broad that it's not super helpful. It often feels equivalent to saying "the culture of the 60s produced Jimi Hendrix". What culture? What about it? Just artistic trends, or economic factors, or political factors? (which are themselves hand-wavy terms, and not all inclusive). It feels lazy

Right. If the headline said, "Alcohol-related deaths spike when people lose their jobs" it wouldnt be a surprise. The pandemic was unique and had many complicating factors that impacted lots of groups in different ways.

I was agreeing with your comment until:

>>the necessary closures

Are you suggesting that the state needed to force private establishments to close, and that - putting aside the human rights implications of this abridgement of private-property/free-association rights - we can definitively say the net effect of these closures was positive?

Well you clearly didn’t read the article because the entire thing is talking about all of the sorts of causes you listed.

I disagree. The thesis reads "but the full impact of the pandemic’s collateral damage is still being tallied". The point above was regarding the response to the pandemic being considered as equal or greater contributors to the rise in alcoholic deaths.

The failure and successes of the response should be distinctly studied to determine a better course of action for the next pandemic.

I do worry that public health has a measurement problem where they only focus on things they can measure/estimate and things that they do cannot estimate they ignore instead of putting in an unscientific guess.

> The failure and successes of the response should be distinctly studied to determine a better course of action for the next pandemic.

For sure. I bet the authors agree. But wouldn't one necessarily need to answer "Did X meaningfully change during the pandemic?" before answering "How much of that change is attributable to which specific causes?"

This is a finding answers the first question and makes it a lot easier to fund research into the second. Every political strategist, economist, sociologist, historian, epidemiologist, and public health official wants answers to the same questions as you -- even while some anticipate a different answer than you might.

It just takes a minute to get there and there's some preliminary research to publish along the way.

Who ever said the response to the pandemic was supposed to be without painful consequences? If the response to cancer is chemotherapy, that can be way more painful and inconvenient than the cancer itself, at least in the short run...the hope is to solve the problem so it doesn't end up killing you.

Bringing this back to tech and software development, it seems to be a standard human failure that discussing "which of these option is least bad" is really hard to do.

People want to argue for a course of action which is all sunshine and rainbows and against one that is evil and wrong. Even something totally boring like what DB to use can flare up because no one likes "in the big picture they're all a bit crappy, this one has a small chance of being better but may turn out to be a hindrance but it's not that important let's just pick one".

Once you get to the level of human health, the economy and politics there's very little chance to discuss things objectively.

You can check the study yourself (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2790491). They simply looked at alcohol-related mortality across the entire US in 2019, 2020, and provisional data from the first half of 2021. There is no basis on which to make a statement comparing localities that implemented strict lockdowns versus those implemented less strict lockdowns. The only event that definitely affected the entire country equally is "the pandemic" broadly. They can't draw conclusions the data don't support just to make it more palatable to you.

Saying this should definitely be studied doesn't mean every single paper that gets published needs to only study this. It's not even clear it's really possible to get the data. How do you measure the strictness of different responses? Do municipalities publish alcohol mortality individually or is only the aggregate data available?

I think psychlops suggests seeing the pandemic as a catalyst rather than the cause.

So introducing a catalyst to a stable reaction and then not attributing the increased reaction rates to the catalyst...

You’re coming across like you’re trying to miss the point. The entire article is attributing increased reaction rates to the pandemic.

>You’re coming across like you’re trying to miss the point.

My response needs to be read as a response to nautilius's attempt to interpret psychlops' root comment.

Yeah, that still doesn't change that impression, though.

I don't understand. My comment is to show that a catalyst can be a cause. How is everyone else reading it?

Please avoid shallow dismissals of other commentors. Everyone here is a real person who has feelings.

Remember the human.

I'd argue the parent commenter committed this very sin; shallowly dismissing the article's conclusion to push their preferred narrative (ie, pandemic restrictions == bad).

Well of course it’s the response. Surely no one thinks that the virus itself causes alcoholism?

I think “the pandemic” here means both the spread of the virus and society’s response to it.

I'm not trying to blame all our problems on social media, but I think a significant confounding factor that should be considered in any analysis blaming bad unrelated outcomes on the pandemic, is that TikTok exploded in popularity right around the same time as the start of the pandemic(in the US, at least).

Wouldn't that be because of stay at home orders? I thought most people used TikTok in 2020 to keep connected, especially teens

As long as we're pushing preferred narratives (in your case: public health measures = bad), maybe it's because hospitals and treatment rooms were full of unvaccinated individuals and people who declined to social-distance or wear masks, preventing alcoholics in distress from getting the acute treatments they need. Certainly a lot of cancer patients died that way[1][2][3][4][5].

I know a lot of people who took advantage of the pandemic to sort out their lives, including getting sober. Public health authorities from day 1 were taking into account the affects of lockdowns on mental health, thankfully following the evolving science instead of internet conspiracy theories.

[1] https://khn.org/news/article/covid-overwhelmed-hospitals-pos...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/21/how-unvac...

[3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-20/covid-19...

[4] https://www.breastcancer.org/managing-life/staying-well-duri...

[5] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-20/hospital...

None of my experience matches this account. The last paragraph is laughably perpendicular, in fact.

I don’t think we can solve that here, but it’s interesting how people can end up seeing things so differently.

> Certainly a lot of cancer patients died that way.

This was not my experience, n=1 of course. My SO came down with lymphoma in November 2020. All of the appointments with the oncologist and all of the appointments for treatment took place at a cancer center dedicated to treating cancer patients. Other procedures generally took place at locations that did not offer emergency services (think biopsies and port installation).

At no point during diagnosis or treatment were we turned away nor did we face long wait times. This was before the vaccine was available, so everyone was unvaccinated at the time. The biggest barrier was getting seen for "a weird pain in my back that is preventing me from sleeping" without going through the emergency room and contracting COVID while waiting.

Isn’t most of that stuff due to “the pandemic” lockdowns?

Yes, sadly it appears this is likely the case.

It appears that the reaction to the virus has possibly caused so much more harm than the virus itself.

> It appears that the reaction to the virus has possibly caused so much more harm than the virus itself

Too early to know. It’ll take years before we know the full consequences of the anti-vaxx movement.

Not according to a number of experts it isn't.

Like you said, time will tell. The enquiry into it is just starting up in my country.

I'm sure experts from all sides will get together, and see what went wrong.

"Lockdowns Cost More Lives Than They Saved and Must Not Happen Again, Scientists Tell MPs"

https://dailysceptic.org/2022/03/30/lockdowns-cost-more-live...

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