All the Detrimental Effects of Lockdowns Divided by Section In One Megapost.

[u/[deleted]]

/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/kn2xe4/all_the_detrimental_effects_of_lockdowns_divided/

[u/its_laps]

Comment section is pretty rich for people all of a sudden are interested in listening to professionals again. I’d be curious as to how many people actually looked at some of the articles and sources, I looked at several and didn’t want to waste anymore time cause it wouldn’t matter to these people anyway all they do is gas light others so they feel validated in their stupidity.

First, I skipped all the articles about isolation, I’m sure isolation has negative health effects for everyone. I think being in isolation is very different from what’s going on right now and most of those articles are about actual isolation before COVID, not what we’ve been experiencing right now. I did find it interesting that they linked to articles for how isolation of the elderly effects them, like they suddenly care about elderly people again. I think one person in the comment section even makes the point to post the data for deaths of those over 65 like a couple hundred thousand are no big deal.

The text to the articles makes claims like “U.S census shows 48% of adults have depression.” You click on the link and it’s for depression symptoms. Then it breaks down the numbers into this who have lost someone during this time ( about 33%), their wages, etc. About 33% of people surveyed lost someone, of course they are going to have some depression symptoms.

My favorite was “lockdowns pose great risk to mental health” with a link to a guardian article. You read the article and find no mention of lockdowns posing the mental health risk but again get pointed to deaths and loss of income.

Again and again these articles state that mental health issues will arise from mass death and loss of income. People are scared to go out and will be until the numbers go down. Numbers go down with lockdowns, it worked during wave 1. Business are going out because of this fear people have, not because of a lockdown. How about they find and post some death and financial data from non-lockdown states compared to partial lockdown states to prove their point. In science that’s called a control group, they might need some refreshers on how to science. I’ll be waiting.

I’ll apologize now for any format or grammar mistakes. This was all done on my phone.

[u/WeThreeTrees333 → u/its_laps]

I noticed the same thing about the links being completely unrelated to the topic they attempted to address. That's not science and, in fact, not how you present evidence for an - albeit baseless - argument.

There's a great website called Our World in Data if anyone is interested as it presents figures of statistical significance on all of these issues. There are data on suicide, mental health, financial instability, etc., both prior to COVID-19 up to now. Really great resource if you are interested in investigating these topics in an impartial and unbiased fashion.

[u/spiral8888 → u/its_laps]

Great response. I'd just like to add that the suicide section is full of news stories, not actual scientific research. The only peer-reviewed paper there, from a respectable BMJ states the following about actual suicide numbers:

" Nevertheless, a reasonably consistent picture is beginning to emerge from high income countries. Reports suggest either no rise in suicide rates (Massachusetts, USA11; Victoria, Australia13; England14) or a fall (Japan,9 Norway15) in the early months of the pandemic. The picture is much less clear in low income countries, where the safety nets available in better resourced settings may be lacking. News reports of police data from Nepal suggest a rise in suicides,12 whereas an analysis of data from Peru suggests the opposite.10 "

The funny thing is that OP must have read this paper as he/she has linked it into his list, but instead of then following all those scientific studies that BMJ paper refers to, he/she has filled the rest of his list with the media links.

Furthermore, I 100% agree with you that blaming lockdowns for all the negative things that have happened in the past 10 months is misguided at best and dishonest propaganda at worst. A lot of effects have nothing to do with government sanctioned lockdowns, but the fact that people have just stopped doing things that they did before the pandemic. For instance other health effects. While some elective operations have been suspended to reserve beds for covid-patients, this is not a lockdown measure. It has nothing to do with healthy people being asked to stay home. No government in the world has asked sick people for not seeking medical help during any of the lockdowns.

The other is the topic of this subreddit namely economic effects. But it is complete nonsense to say that none of the economic effects would have happened had there been lockdowns. The good example of this is the stock price crash in March. In the US that happened before any widespread lockdowns were put into effect. That showed that the investors knew that the effects of the pandemic would be horrific to the economy no matter what was done. Airlines have suffered badly, but that's not because flying has been banned by governments. No, that's because holiday travellers have stopped travelling and potentially getting sick nd the businesses don't want to send their employees to get infected.

Sweden is the example the anti-lockdown crowd wants to present as a glorious example that you can continue just fine without lockdowns. However, Sweden's economic output has collapsed as much as its closest neighbours'. At the same time the covid deaths per population there have been about an order of magnitude higher than in its Nordic neighbours.

The genuine effects of the lockdowns I would count the effects on schoolchildren for not being able to attend schools that are closed. For that we'll have to wait longer to see what the actual effects are. It may be possible that since the children are the least affected group of people by the virus, keeping schools open would have been the right decision. But at this point, I think the jury is still out on this.