People are desperate. This is to be expected. Along with unemployment, loneliness, hopelessness, helplessness, stress, fear, and anxiety have all risen greatly. This is how people cope when they are not in control of their lives and especially when they don't see a path to regain that control. I would expect more of this. Drug overdoses were already a huge issue because of societal issues. Now, they will be even more so. In a society with no community and poor job prospects, prospects for the future look bleak. Can't really blame people for wanting something to console them in such bleak times. For many, it went from bleak to dire and horrific. The handling of the pandemic is just the latest way that society has failed so many.
Being the richest country on earth and also the one with the worst virus situation can also lead to cognitive dissonance for many people. Envy of other places that are handling the situation better is another thing that can lead people to despair. As is having no leader or leadership, no direction, no goal, no plan, and no idea of what the future will bring.
It's a nationwide disaster that people are simply not ready to deal with. Many people here have no idea what suffering is and therefore, they don't know how to suffer or how to get through such times. Suffering is externalized onto minorities and other unwanted people in society so that the well off don't have to deal with it. Now everyone's suffering and many simply can't cope with the suffering or with the additional suffering. Many resort to childish behaviors like refusing to wear masks or social distance to make themselves feel better by hurting others. A lot of people simply never grew up and now that suffering is inevitable, feel like they should be getting an exemption.
As a recovering alcoholic I'm incredibly grateful to have built a toolkit to stay sober. Getting sober is a nightmare in the best of times. People in AA – which I haven't attended regularly for a few years – talk about being a "grateful alchoholic". It bothered when I heard that. I just wanted to have some bourbon and not put myself and others at risk. But over time I realized that they're grateful because getting sober forced them to deal with life in healthier ways. Or to deal with it at all.
While I don't think all of people that are overdosing are "addicts" per se, I know many non-addicts that don't deal well with life that great. Sure, they're fine when everything is going pretty well, but they fall down when the going gets tough.
I feel for people. I've never felt despair or shame like I did when I hit bottom.
Much luck and love to everyone out there. Life gets difficult, and sometimes it gets really, really difficult. Lean on people if you can, anyone that you can. Find a community if you can, online or not.
I know this advice rings hollow when people are worried about putting food on the table or keeping a roof over their head or just trying to stay safe. But you can do this. Don't worry about thriving, just survive.
Sorry, for the rambling, this just really hit home.
> It's a nationwide disaster that people are simply not ready to deal with. Many people here have no idea what suffering is and therefore, they don't know how to suffer or how to get through such times. Suffering is externalized onto minorities and other unwanted people in society so that the well off don't have to deal with it. Now everyone's suffering and many simply can't cope with the suffering or with the additional suffering.
These are hard times, for all of us.
My background: grew up in the USA, with typical public school education. When I was a kid in school, we (briefly) covered times like the protests against the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Suffrage, and such. But it all seemed distant to me back then. I knew, at an academic level, that the people fighting for change had a hard time... but we (as a nation) got through it, and made things better (well, maybe not really, but that's another discussion).
We are living through history, right here, right now. I can now see it from the other side. I can see a little more clearly what those people in the history books were going through. I now don't have the benefit of reading in a book that it all worked out in the end (that women got the vote, that civil rights laws were passed, etc.).
It may seem like it will never get any better. That the struggle for a brighter, better future for everyone is futile. That hate and stupidity will drag down this country, and that we'll never recover.
Do we all have the courage to continue on? In the face of unfairness and injustice? What will the history books say about us 50 years from now?
It's possible the history books in 50 years will say a bunch of kids with unarticulated and poorly thought out grievances tried to burn down the country after being cooped up for 3 months and ingesting too much propaganda from Reddit and the public school system resulting in the re-election of Donald Trump.
One never knows when one sets out to be a hero what the end result will be.
This time period also seems to be radicalizing people at an accelerated rate. After that USAF military police sergeant murdered a cop and federal security officer I started investigating some of these communities and they're growing. Not just the right-wing "race war" types either. Both sides of the political spectrum are growing their radicalized bases.
The communists and the facists types are both radicalizing around anti-government sentiment more than anything and we've seen real lives lost as a result.
I hope things get better but everything is increasing in polarization at a time when people have a lot of free time and a country being consumed by an out of control virus that has been politicized.
Just please watch out: the polarization you see on the internet (no matter where you see it) is rarely a reflection of the face-to-face reality. There is much more kindness and tolerance when people are face to face. Always has been.
The danger, the reason I point this out, is that when people see too much of it on the internet they start to lose faith in humanity, and they start projecting that world view on to the face to face interactions.
I'm not sure I agree with the statement that the US has the "worst virus situation".
It has some of the most cases, sure, if you compare it by population though, it's still high, but it's not horrible. The US is #12 for cases per capita, most European countries are between 4,000-6,000 cases per capita, while the US is at 8,500, which is definitely more. But fewer people die per capita than in the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Italy, and some other minor countries.
It isn't like the US has orders of magnitude more infections per capita, and there's more people dying per capita in many other major countries. In such countries you'd have about the same chance of catching the virus, and a greater change of dying, as in the US.
The majority of people that are refusing to wear masks are doing so because they believe the science/data supports that decision. You might disagree with that, and whether the science/data actually supports it is a different discussion, but they aren't just being "childish" and refusing to follow recommendations for no reason.
I think there's obviously political power to gain in making the situation look as bad as possible, so that a group can then use that as a foothold to advance their own political policies. It's unfortunate that the issue is so political already. But you can easily tell when it's happening when people are referring to "society failing" and needing to "reshape society" and saying how horrible it is in the US when it really isn't that bad, etc. You can't advance new politics without a narrative of the old way of things being bad.
I guess you can easily argue that there's political power for me to downplay the situation and make it look as good as possible, in order to prevent new politics from advancing. And that's true. But it's good to at least share both sides of the story.
> The majority of people that are refusing to wear masks are doing so because they believe the science/data supports that decision.
That's beyond absurd. There isn't a single shred of evidence in support of not wearing masks helping the pandemic and quite a lot of evidence to the contrary. Not only that, but common sense says that putting a barrier between your mouth / nose and infectious particles and thereby stopping some of them from entering your body can reduce the chances of one getting sick by lowering the amount of viral particles entering the body. People knew this in 1918. Now we have science to back this up and have had it for over a hundred years. It is complete idiocy to suggest that science doesn't support mask wearing.
> if you compare it by population though, it's still high, but it's not horrible.
> But fewer people die per capita than in the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Italy, and some other minor countries.
You listed the countries with more deaths per capita. Excluding countries with < 10,000 cases, there are 6. The 5 you mentioned, plus Belgium.
That means every other country in the world has fewer deaths per capita. The US is the 7th worst out of 66 countries. You can say that you're satisfied with that standing, but you can't say we're doing well.
Disappointment with that metric may greatly overlap with partisan disappointment in the current administration. But Occam's razor suggests the former does not require the latter.
Gotta love how everyone is applauding the wisdom of Dr. Bonnie Henry in her success in keeping the coronavirus under control in British Columbia and that of the government for following all her recommendations, and yet when Dr. Henry suggests that to tackle the opioid overdose epidemic, that BC needs to decriminalize drugs and create a safe supply of drugs for the addicted, suddenly everyone stops listening to her.
Drug overdose deaths in BC in May eclipsed covid 19 deaths for the entire year. You'd think people would be a bit more concerned about drug overdoses and willing to listen to the provincial health officer and follow her recommendations.
It's easy to blame people for their own choice in doing drugs. Or get numb to it as isn't a new issue. But a pandemic causing an excess of deaths and huge uncertainly that could infect every person just for living a normal life is fundamentally different.
My prediction is that America seems unable/unwilling to do what's required to stem covid (lack of federal leadership is just horrific here), and as such, America will chose money over lives. It always has. And at that point, sucks to be you if you got covid and die from it -- it'll just be like any other death in America.... largely ignored as a collective.
People are stuck at home now, unemployed, fearful about the present and future, and if opioids were legalized now I have no doubt that dependence and overdoses would surge. Most people fundamentally don't understand drugs or addiction.
Granted I personally believe drugs should be at least decriminalized but I'm well aware that there will be a cost and people have a right to be opposed.
If the last few months have taught me anything, it's that the average person really isn't capable of avoiding decisions that harm themselves and those around them with any consistency. Obviously we already have laws for murder and such but drugs also as it happens have a [lesser] external cost.
I live in Vancouver but am from Texas. I think the way they are dealing with the opiod issue in BC is on point and the right way to deal with the crisis.
Hardly a surprise, I'm sure suicide rates and alcohol consumption are going up as well. It's a combination of loneliness, lack of supervision (can't find a better word, I mean someone who could help in case of an overdose), despair about the future. This pandemic is unprecedented for the modern people, many don't have the means to deal with it psychologically.
A doom and gloom from the media isn't helping either. It's one thing to provide information, but the endless speculation about "how bad its going to get" is irresponsible.
I would say the media is one of the larger factors (after factors such add unemployment though). When you can't go out and mingle with other people a lot of the information some people get about what's going on is from the media.
Relentless doom and despair for at least a year with no leadership or hope in sight and the only thing you can do to help is to stay at home as much as possible. Yeah it's the perfect storm for any "self-medicators" out there.
Their is no leadership vacuum, it has been pushed down to the state and local level so that localities can deal with the situation in a way that best fits. New York City and Montana need different solutions. Whether you agree with their policies, it seems Newsom, Cuomo, De Santis and Abbott have definitely been engaged as leaders.
They absolutely are. My wife is an ICU nurse, former ER nurse, and they've seen way more cases of purposeful suicide attempts and alcohol poisoning in the last few months.
Back when this started I made the claim that the long term consequences of lock down would exceed the short term benefits .
Depression, Drugs overdose, murder (despair), Suicide, extra sedentary issues leading to diabetese/CVD, loss of jobs/meaning et al.
I havent seen anyone do the math of the uptick there to talk about the marginal benefit of lockdown or the fact that this, once again, is a form of biased benefit for the elderly at the expense of the younger (elderly more likely to die, younger more likely to suffer harder from lockdown)
There are medical consequences to the lockdown also. Things like all the cancer screenings that didn't happen because people weren't going to the doctor. And the people who died from heart attacks because they were afraid to go to the ER.
Not to mention long term economic consequences of permanently (not sure how much of this social distancing thing will last after the pandemic is over) altering human connectivity. 15-25% unemployment in most developed economies right now. A lot of the activities people get enjoyment out of (dancing, concerts, church, school, etc) are completely shut down.
> Back when this started I made the claim that the long term consequences of lock down would exceed the short term benefits .
And yet the USA will both have their cake and eat it too. You get both the full brunt of the virus alongside economic collapse.
Instead of discussing the very real results of a demand collapse and how to address that, we get borderline eugenics posts attempting to throw more meat back into the grinder. Its all so incredibly abstract, these lives you want to sacrifice at your local Applebee's. But, hey, you're just worried about the long-term results--you're the caring one here. Those of us who want lockdown, were the ones causing the harm. Not the lack of a safety net, not the collapse of consensus, not the completely incompetent response, and never the fact that the copper has been so thoroughly stripped from the global supply chains that you couldn't even get enough masks into the country with a several months headstart.
The lockdowns? The linked interview doesn’t mention lockdowns once — it talks about the effect of the pandemic.
They go even further to say that it’s not so much money that’s the concern right now — it’s the supply chain.
Critical, essential services aren’t being shutdown with lockdowns. They’re being shutdown because people are getting sick — like the food processing plants in the US, where people work in very close proximity to each other, indoors, all day long.
There are two problems with this. The first is that it's impossible to know what the consequences of a lockdown are, because in all likelihood, many people would be staying home and losing jobs without a "lockdown" because people would still be afraid to go anywhere.
The second problem is that the consequences that we're seeing in the USA aren't exactly the "consequences of a lockdown", they're the consequences of a half-ass lockdown that didn't decrease the numbers like they did in other countries. Both because of non-compliance of people and state/local government, and because of a broken healthcare system. You can't really blame that on the lockdown.
We should really stop even calling it a “lockdown.” What an exaggeration! Nobody’s locked into their homes. States issued these half-assed “Stay At Home orders” which were largely ignored. They might as well have been called Stay At Home suggestions. Around me, you couldn’t even tell there was a worldwide deadly pandemic: everyone is out horsing around and stores and restaurants are packed—no masks. The USA never had a lockdown which is why this is turning into a sustained disaster.
I hear these sorts of sentiments from the USA a lot - where apparently people are actively rioting and protesting against the health lockdown.
I'm from Australia - where while we've had some grumblings about the health measures, on the whole, we've been pretty lucky. Our death toll is 104 people - which even though (comparative) low is still a tragedy.
Yet the USA death toll is over 130,000 people - that is a terrible thing =(. I do not get how the USA can be so blase about it.
And that is with measures in place (although I'm sure there are breaches). Imagine if you simply let it run rampant, and let the health system get overhwelmed? (See Italy).
It does seem like its overwhelming the young who are very laid back about COVID-19, and chaff the most at restrictions.
To be frank - that seems very selfish.
Imagine if the virus had a 30% mortality rate in your cohort? You'd be terrified.
(I'm young, with two young kids under 5. My parents refused to see me or our kids for a couple of months, out of fear they might catch it from us - I missed them as did their grandkids, but I understand why - it must have been scary for them).
And even that aside - have you considered that a lot of the economic downturn isn't from the actual health measures in place - but from the uncertainty, doubt and fear caused by a virus pandemic? People are scared, and that's naturally going to curb some spending. We are a interlinked global economy, and you cannot escape that.
I hope that we'll have a vaccine soon, so we can go back to normal - but in lieu of that, trying to stamp out the virus or contain it isn't a bad goal.
Australia is still much earlier on in its pandemic than the US and other countries. Wait until the lockdowns are national, and going on for months, with no prospect of any way out in sight.
> Yet the USA death toll is over 130,000 people - that is a terrible thing =(. I do not get how the USA can be so blase about it.
Because on a per capita basis the US actually has fewer deaths per million than multiple European countries? Ask yourself how e.g. Belgians can be so blasé about this, they’re doing worse than us in this regard!
Or maybe it’s because deaths have dropped dramatically from their peak and continue to do so?
Or maybe it’s because tens of thousands of people die every year of the flu in each and every western country and to the US, 130K Covid deaths is like 3 or 4 years worth of flu deaths, which no one really cares about?
This is not the Black Death. People don’t care about it because it’s still exceedingly rare to die of it, that’s basically all there is to it.
The concern in the US is that attempts to stamp it out will fail. I hope for your sake that we're wrong, stamping it out just works, and Australia and New Zealand can survive virus free for the next year or so. But when I hear about another month of strict lockdowns in Melbourne, I get pretty worried.
No, it seems logical: if the elderly are at risk, by all means, let them shelter at home and give them money without destroying the economy (as the elderly as less likely to be employed).
Even better, for old people who need to work, give them full pay every week, and just ask them in return to stay at home and use uber eats.
But we didn't do that. Too bad: it would still have saved a lot of money (and the actual economy)
> I hope that we'll have a vaccine soon
I will be generous enough to not claim my dose, to let you and others test it first, to make sure there are no autoimmune diseases or other bad things it can trigger
It’s only a matter of time before hard drugs are legalized, similar to marijuana. It’ll probably take 20 years, but we will get there.
I know Vancouver setup a legal opioid vending machine as a test run. Doctor checks you out, prescribes a legal opioid (hydromorphone in this case). You scan your badge and your dose pops out.
No more stealing, prostituing, robbing, or other “hustle”. You just take your dose. Much lower risk of overdose and far fewer complications from shooting street drugs.
I’ve read about addicts in these types of programs and suddenly they don’t have to hustle for 12 hours a day. They can get a job. Or, they just have the time to stop and think about their life and what direction they want it to go in.
Not claiming it’s a panacea at all. But it’s better than the situation we’re in now.
Another perspective is to look at traditional use of opiates in cultures before they were illegal. Raw opium has a much higher ratio of lethal dose to effective dose vs heroin. For example in parts of India elderly will take some opium with their chai to ease the discomforts of old age. While you may become addicted it’s unlikely you will overdose.
A big part of the potency of recreational drugs is due to its illegality forcing suppliers to pack as much of a punch in the smallest package. Another contributing factor is Western culture - you don’t see a huge demand for low potency cannabis. People like their drugs strong.
If anyone here is "losing it" from your routine being destroyed and your city being shut down, I highly, highly recommend you take a week (preferably 2) off and do as much outdoor activity as possible. You should not return home during this period. This will reset your brain because it will break your new covid19 routine with new activities and new location.
When you come back, use this new state of mind to change your routine before you settle back into the state you were in before you left.
yep! go wilderness camping. resets everything! circadian rhythm, routine, mental fog, etc. and added benefit of understanding how insignificant you are in the world :) optimistic nihilism.
I lived alone for 2 years but most of the day I was out, working and doing my stuff. Some weekends when I had nothing to do and no one to hang out with I kind of felt what loneliness is. Not that it was a big problem to me then as I can entertain myself with a good book, a game, some movies, etc, but several weeks of that would've been very different.
Loneliness can hit you hard, very hard. And on top of that if you have any addiction and mental health problems...
Similar : moved cross country for work, felt for a few days lonely, then somehow thought "not as lonely as pets in shelters", adopted one, total improvement for both!
In terms of healthy life-years lost, stay-at-home orders could be much, much worse than complete freedom at this point.
Depression causes more lost life years than cancer, AIDs, and war combined (without even accounting for how depression can cause things like alcoholism and heart disease) (source: The Noonday Demon). So it's not unreasonable to guess that the increased anxiety and depression from quarantining could be much more detrimental in terms of years lost in aggregate.
For a personal anecdote, my grandfather who was in a nursing home died during the pandemic. It wasn't from covid-19 but I certainly think the quarantine accelerated his death (and prevented any family members from seeing him in his last days even after trying desperately).
I know it's easy for someone young like me to say this, not being in much personal danger from exposure. Also, I do think we were rational to lock down early on when we didn't know much about the virus. But I do think we need to really attempt to quantify the indirect damages of quarantining vs not at this point. We may find that the morals of the American left don't match the reality.
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Being the richest country on earth and also the one with the worst virus situation can also lead to cognitive dissonance for many people. Envy of other places that are handling the situation better is another thing that can lead people to despair. As is having no leader or leadership, no direction, no goal, no plan, and no idea of what the future will bring.
It's a nationwide disaster that people are simply not ready to deal with. Many people here have no idea what suffering is and therefore, they don't know how to suffer or how to get through such times. Suffering is externalized onto minorities and other unwanted people in society so that the well off don't have to deal with it. Now everyone's suffering and many simply can't cope with the suffering or with the additional suffering. Many resort to childish behaviors like refusing to wear masks or social distance to make themselves feel better by hurting others. A lot of people simply never grew up and now that suffering is inevitable, feel like they should be getting an exemption.
While I don't think all of people that are overdosing are "addicts" per se, I know many non-addicts that don't deal well with life that great. Sure, they're fine when everything is going pretty well, but they fall down when the going gets tough.
I feel for people. I've never felt despair or shame like I did when I hit bottom.
Much luck and love to everyone out there. Life gets difficult, and sometimes it gets really, really difficult. Lean on people if you can, anyone that you can. Find a community if you can, online or not.
I know this advice rings hollow when people are worried about putting food on the table or keeping a roof over their head or just trying to stay safe. But you can do this. Don't worry about thriving, just survive.
Sorry, for the rambling, this just really hit home.
These are hard times, for all of us.
My background: grew up in the USA, with typical public school education. When I was a kid in school, we (briefly) covered times like the protests against the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Suffrage, and such. But it all seemed distant to me back then. I knew, at an academic level, that the people fighting for change had a hard time... but we (as a nation) got through it, and made things better (well, maybe not really, but that's another discussion).
We are living through history, right here, right now. I can now see it from the other side. I can see a little more clearly what those people in the history books were going through. I now don't have the benefit of reading in a book that it all worked out in the end (that women got the vote, that civil rights laws were passed, etc.).
It may seem like it will never get any better. That the struggle for a brighter, better future for everyone is futile. That hate and stupidity will drag down this country, and that we'll never recover.
Do we all have the courage to continue on? In the face of unfairness and injustice? What will the history books say about us 50 years from now?
One never knows when one sets out to be a hero what the end result will be.
The communists and the facists types are both radicalizing around anti-government sentiment more than anything and we've seen real lives lost as a result.
I hope things get better but everything is increasing in polarization at a time when people have a lot of free time and a country being consumed by an out of control virus that has been politicized.
It's a recipe for disaster.
The danger, the reason I point this out, is that when people see too much of it on the internet they start to lose faith in humanity, and they start projecting that world view on to the face to face interactions.
It has some of the most cases, sure, if you compare it by population though, it's still high, but it's not horrible. The US is #12 for cases per capita, most European countries are between 4,000-6,000 cases per capita, while the US is at 8,500, which is definitely more. But fewer people die per capita than in the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Italy, and some other minor countries.
It isn't like the US has orders of magnitude more infections per capita, and there's more people dying per capita in many other major countries. In such countries you'd have about the same chance of catching the virus, and a greater change of dying, as in the US.
The majority of people that are refusing to wear masks are doing so because they believe the science/data supports that decision. You might disagree with that, and whether the science/data actually supports it is a different discussion, but they aren't just being "childish" and refusing to follow recommendations for no reason.
I think there's obviously political power to gain in making the situation look as bad as possible, so that a group can then use that as a foothold to advance their own political policies. It's unfortunate that the issue is so political already. But you can easily tell when it's happening when people are referring to "society failing" and needing to "reshape society" and saying how horrible it is in the US when it really isn't that bad, etc. You can't advance new politics without a narrative of the old way of things being bad.
I guess you can easily argue that there's political power for me to downplay the situation and make it look as good as possible, in order to prevent new politics from advancing. And that's true. But it's good to at least share both sides of the story.
That's beyond absurd. There isn't a single shred of evidence in support of not wearing masks helping the pandemic and quite a lot of evidence to the contrary. Not only that, but common sense says that putting a barrier between your mouth / nose and infectious particles and thereby stopping some of them from entering your body can reduce the chances of one getting sick by lowering the amount of viral particles entering the body. People knew this in 1918. Now we have science to back this up and have had it for over a hundred years. It is complete idiocy to suggest that science doesn't support mask wearing.
> But fewer people die per capita than in the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Italy, and some other minor countries.
You listed the countries with more deaths per capita. Excluding countries with < 10,000 cases, there are 6. The 5 you mentioned, plus Belgium.
That means every other country in the world has fewer deaths per capita. The US is the 7th worst out of 66 countries. You can say that you're satisfied with that standing, but you can't say we're doing well.
Disappointment with that metric may greatly overlap with partisan disappointment in the current administration. But Occam's razor suggests the former does not require the latter.
Drug overdose deaths in BC in May eclipsed covid 19 deaths for the entire year. You'd think people would be a bit more concerned about drug overdoses and willing to listen to the provincial health officer and follow her recommendations.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/overdose-dea...
My prediction is that America seems unable/unwilling to do what's required to stem covid (lack of federal leadership is just horrific here), and as such, America will chose money over lives. It always has. And at that point, sucks to be you if you got covid and die from it -- it'll just be like any other death in America.... largely ignored as a collective.
Granted I personally believe drugs should be at least decriminalized but I'm well aware that there will be a cost and people have a right to be opposed.
If the last few months have taught me anything, it's that the average person really isn't capable of avoiding decisions that harm themselves and those around them with any consistency. Obviously we already have laws for murder and such but drugs also as it happens have a [lesser] external cost.
Many of these overdoses surely are suicides.
Depression, Drugs overdose, murder (despair), Suicide, extra sedentary issues leading to diabetese/CVD, loss of jobs/meaning et al.
I havent seen anyone do the math of the uptick there to talk about the marginal benefit of lockdown or the fact that this, once again, is a form of biased benefit for the elderly at the expense of the younger (elderly more likely to die, younger more likely to suffer harder from lockdown)
And yet the USA will both have their cake and eat it too. You get both the full brunt of the virus alongside economic collapse.
Instead of discussing the very real results of a demand collapse and how to address that, we get borderline eugenics posts attempting to throw more meat back into the grinder. Its all so incredibly abstract, these lives you want to sacrifice at your local Applebee's. But, hey, you're just worried about the long-term results--you're the caring one here. Those of us who want lockdown, were the ones causing the harm. Not the lack of a safety net, not the collapse of consensus, not the completely incompetent response, and never the fact that the copper has been so thoroughly stripped from the global supply chains that you couldn't even get enough masks into the country with a several months headstart.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/pandemic-could-mean-260-mi...
They go even further to say that it’s not so much money that’s the concern right now — it’s the supply chain.
Critical, essential services aren’t being shutdown with lockdowns. They’re being shutdown because people are getting sick — like the food processing plants in the US, where people work in very close proximity to each other, indoors, all day long.
Deleted Comment
The second problem is that the consequences that we're seeing in the USA aren't exactly the "consequences of a lockdown", they're the consequences of a half-ass lockdown that didn't decrease the numbers like they did in other countries. Both because of non-compliance of people and state/local government, and because of a broken healthcare system. You can't really blame that on the lockdown.
This is why government are engaging in stimulus spending, or increasing their social support programs.
This is why they exist.
https://www.justfacts.com/news_covid-19_anxiety_lockdowns_li...
I'm from Australia - where while we've had some grumblings about the health measures, on the whole, we've been pretty lucky. Our death toll is 104 people - which even though (comparative) low is still a tragedy.
Yet the USA death toll is over 130,000 people - that is a terrible thing =(. I do not get how the USA can be so blase about it.
And that is with measures in place (although I'm sure there are breaches). Imagine if you simply let it run rampant, and let the health system get overhwelmed? (See Italy).
It does seem like its overwhelming the young who are very laid back about COVID-19, and chaff the most at restrictions.
To be frank - that seems very selfish.
Imagine if the virus had a 30% mortality rate in your cohort? You'd be terrified.
(I'm young, with two young kids under 5. My parents refused to see me or our kids for a couple of months, out of fear they might catch it from us - I missed them as did their grandkids, but I understand why - it must have been scary for them).
And even that aside - have you considered that a lot of the economic downturn isn't from the actual health measures in place - but from the uncertainty, doubt and fear caused by a virus pandemic? People are scared, and that's naturally going to curb some spending. We are a interlinked global economy, and you cannot escape that.
I hope that we'll have a vaccine soon, so we can go back to normal - but in lieu of that, trying to stamp out the virus or contain it isn't a bad goal.
Because on a per capita basis the US actually has fewer deaths per million than multiple European countries? Ask yourself how e.g. Belgians can be so blasé about this, they’re doing worse than us in this regard!
Or maybe it’s because deaths have dropped dramatically from their peak and continue to do so?
Or maybe it’s because tens of thousands of people die every year of the flu in each and every western country and to the US, 130K Covid deaths is like 3 or 4 years worth of flu deaths, which no one really cares about?
This is not the Black Death. People don’t care about it because it’s still exceedingly rare to die of it, that’s basically all there is to it.
No, it seems logical: if the elderly are at risk, by all means, let them shelter at home and give them money without destroying the economy (as the elderly as less likely to be employed).
Even better, for old people who need to work, give them full pay every week, and just ask them in return to stay at home and use uber eats.
But we didn't do that. Too bad: it would still have saved a lot of money (and the actual economy)
> I hope that we'll have a vaccine soon
I will be generous enough to not claim my dose, to let you and others test it first, to make sure there are no autoimmune diseases or other bad things it can trigger
Dead Comment
http://www.vch.ca/public-health/harm-reduction/overdose-prev...
There's not a whole lotta point, since everything has Fentanyl in it these days, except pot (probably)
And free Naloxone (Narcan) kits at Shopper's Drug Mart, London Drugs, and other places:
https://towardtheheart.com/site-finder
They only ask your age and whether this is your first kit. No ID required
There were 131 overdose calls in Vancouver yesterday
I know Vancouver setup a legal opioid vending machine as a test run. Doctor checks you out, prescribes a legal opioid (hydromorphone in this case). You scan your badge and your dose pops out.
No more stealing, prostituing, robbing, or other “hustle”. You just take your dose. Much lower risk of overdose and far fewer complications from shooting street drugs.
I’ve read about addicts in these types of programs and suddenly they don’t have to hustle for 12 hours a day. They can get a job. Or, they just have the time to stop and think about their life and what direction they want it to go in.
Not claiming it’s a panacea at all. But it’s better than the situation we’re in now.
A big part of the potency of recreational drugs is due to its illegality forcing suppliers to pack as much of a punch in the smallest package. Another contributing factor is Western culture - you don’t see a huge demand for low potency cannabis. People like their drugs strong.
When you come back, use this new state of mind to change your routine before you settle back into the state you were in before you left.
Loneliness can hit you hard, very hard. And on top of that if you have any addiction and mental health problems...
Depression causes more lost life years than cancer, AIDs, and war combined (without even accounting for how depression can cause things like alcoholism and heart disease) (source: The Noonday Demon). So it's not unreasonable to guess that the increased anxiety and depression from quarantining could be much more detrimental in terms of years lost in aggregate.
For a personal anecdote, my grandfather who was in a nursing home died during the pandemic. It wasn't from covid-19 but I certainly think the quarantine accelerated his death (and prevented any family members from seeing him in his last days even after trying desperately).
I know it's easy for someone young like me to say this, not being in much personal danger from exposure. Also, I do think we were rational to lock down early on when we didn't know much about the virus. But I do think we need to really attempt to quantify the indirect damages of quarantining vs not at this point. We may find that the morals of the American left don't match the reality.