COVID Lockdowns and Good Intentions

Dead is dead: Increased Alcohol-Related Deaths, U.S., 2020-2021

Meep is an actuary. Studying the statistics of death is her job.

More Americans 65 and Under Died from Alcohol-Related Causes Than Covid-19 in 2020, Study Finds

If you think that the lockdown of the past 2 years was the best thing ever, then you should definitely NOT click that link, because that post deals with trade-offs we made. Trade-offs that were never discussed or even acknowledged by a lot of people.

Dead is dead: Does it matter if you died of a drinking yourself to death or of COVID?

As I remarked in the Team Reality Podcast last week, one of the more annoying aspects of policymaking in general, and not just during COVID, is treating everything as if no trade-offs are involved. It’s all-or-nothing. If you don’t go along with the lockdowns, you must want everybody dead.

Well, “they” must have wanted all these people to have died of alcohol-related deaths. The logic works both ways.

Many of the younger adults — those age 24 – 35, say, who were living by themselves — did not have serious risk from Covid. They did have serious risk from depression and isolation.

Alcohol-related deaths (including accidents but excluding COVID) increased from 213 per day before the pandemic to 282 per day during the pandemic. (33%)

What Meep can't examine are the long-term health impacts. How many people gained weight? How many people did develop drinking or other substance-abuse problems, who haven't died yet?

There are also possible impacts that are even less amenable to statistical analysis, such as lockdown led to drinking, which led to a lost job, or a broken marriage, or any number of other of impacts from the policy. And I know they had good intentions. See the image from the Good Intentions Paving Company above.