Vaccine reluctance & General COVID Discussion

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From the WaPo article above:

In third-grade reading — a critical year — 60.2 percent of Lewis-Palmer students were considered proficient in reading in 2021, up from 58.2 percent in 2019. During that same time, Colorado proficiency rates dropped from 41.3 to 39.1 percent.

The school district made even bigger gains in fifth grade. Nearly 75 percent of fifth graders were considered proficient in reading in 2021, up six percentage points from 2019. Colorado state dropped 1.2 percentage points during that time.

So (while its math proficiency levels dropped) reading proficiency levels went up slightly at one wealthy and high achieving Colorado district that was more open, while in the rest of the state saw a slight decrease in reading proficiency.

Interesting, I guess, but it’s not surprising that less wealthy, lower performing districts would not fare quite as well during covid, regardless of covid policies. These groups have tended to disproportionately impacted across the board. But is important to suss out the impact of covid generally vs. the impact of the remediating measures such as masking and/or online learning, and there was no effort to do that here. The slight drop in reading levels state-wide is not exactly strong evidence that districts which had more strict covid policies in place have horribly failed their children or irrevocably stunted their education.

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@mom60, iirc, you don’t live too far from my area. We’ve had lots of windy weather lately and wearing a mask has been so helpful on walks.

At work, the mask mandate was lifted today and it did feel good to be able to breathe! I share a large office with 2 others so I feel fairly safe.

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I am shocked, but not really, to see in the same thread someone crazy-facing a post concerning long-term organ damage (like the incidence of kidney injury to hospitalized COVID patients), which has been discussed a fair amount in the research.

Am I supposed to ignore that point, and then assume that we can measure with any real degree of accuracy the true triggering causes of suicides, drug addiction and depression?

Just to make one thing clear: the vulnerable also includes many really great young people like my kid who is in graduate school at a tippy top university doing tippy top research in a tippy top field that would normally get the CC seal of approval. She’s 25 and is as good as they come as people go. She’s going to contribute something to the world and adds a whole lot of empathy and kindness. She’s not expendable as a trade-off.

This particular global challenge was tragically politicized and it still is. I frankly am asking myself now why I even clicked on this thread again. I agree with the poster above who points out that we could all use a little more grace and little less crazy face.

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Most of us understand that the data on suicides, drug addiction or, depression can not parse out any natural increases versus Covid related increases in that data. But even the Covid data you provided with the incidents of long term kidney injury has some “holes” from my point of view. The main one is that its data set is from March 2020-March 2021 before the majority of Americans could get vaccinated, and it is not representative of our current population (no one under 18 and over 75% of US adults are currently fully vaccinated), and does not even account for the most recent variants (delta and omicron). But as a thrice vaccinated individual (much less likely to have serious complications or have to be hospitalized in the 1st place), the study just does not have as much meaning for me personally.

So it is okay when data is shared on the increases in youth suicides (especially among certain groups of color) or now provide recent meta-data from 29 studies that the prevalence of depression and anxiety symptoms among youth has doubled when compared with prepandemic estimates and you can find “holes”. But I believe that both data sets have some relevance as most of the hospitalized Covid patients are unvaccinated and that the large increases in mental health issues among young people are significant enough to look for ways to help them, regardless of the cause.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2782796

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Anyone looking for all the answers on Covid (or depression/suicide/etc) will be waiting for a long time, if they ever get it.

Covid, drug abuse, world wars, etc, are ongoing. Data will come as it comes. It’s not instantaneous.

As for any sort of “put down” emojis, they don’t bug me personally. I’ll hover over them, then consider the source, smile, and move on.

The various honest discussions and musing on here I enjoy. As I said before, it’s ongoing. I like seeing what is out there and sharing what we all share, then adjusting my thoughts as seems best.

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Yet others are wholly convinced that they conclusively know that the cause of these incidents is remote schooling and masking. I personally believe that both sets of data are caused by Covid: I believe the kidney and other organ injuries are a direct result of Covid infection and I believe that the increase in suicides, drug addiction and depression are due to a global pandemic. You could say I’m splitting hairs but my point is that I am not convinced that suicides in young populations increased because of covid mitigation (lockdowns, remote schooling, masking etc) rather than because it was scary as all could be to young people to witness a pandemic that made them see their own mortality, the fragility of life, and the ease with which a virus you can’t see changed their whole world. Was it because they had to go to school on zoom or because their best friend lost 2 sets of grandparents and their significant other lost a parent? I don’t know and I find it presumptuous that others are so certain that they do.

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And then there’s this:

" While experts still need to study the long-term effects of COVID-19 on the brain, over half of a U.S. COVID-19 survivor sample reported symptoms of depression months after recovery, those with more severe COVID symptoms being more likely to have depression.

In addition, researchers found that many survivors of COVID-19 reported cases of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, insomnia, and obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms. Other studies showed that the prescription of antidepressants, intimate partner violence, and suicidal thoughts have gone up since the start of the pandemic.

Those who’ve had COVID-19 appear to have a higher risk of a mental health disorder after recovery from the virus.

## What Causes Depression in COVID-19 Survivors?

Experts believe that a COVID-19 infection can affect your mental health in two major ways:

** Your body’s immune response to the virus itself*
** The psychological stress of a COVID-19 infection*

When you get infected with the virus that causes COVID-19, your immune system produces cytokines, chemokines, and other things that promote inflammation. Experts found a specific kind of cytokine, called T-helper-2 cell-secreted cytokines, in people with COVID-19. Higher levels of these cytokines seemed to link to a more severe case of the virus. Experts found that if your body doesn’t properly control these cytokines, certain bad things can happen:

** Nerve inflammation*
** Blood-brain-barrier disruption*
** Peripheral immune cell invasion into the central nervous system*
** Impaired nerve transmission*
** Hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis dysfunction*
** Microglia activation and indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) induction*

All of these represent the roots of psychiatric disorders, like depression. This suggests that the actual effects of the COVID-19 virus can lead to depression, even after a person recovers from the virus."

I agree there’s a lot related. It’s definitely not all due to masks and zoom.

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I completely agree with your assessment of what’s going on (that almost all of the increases in mental health issues are either directly or indirectly caused by the pandemic), but I don’t know if there will ever be a definitive way to prove it statistically.

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Well, I suppose one factor to research was how different populations reacted. Was there a mental health crisis in Sweden, for example? Were youth more dysfunctional in Florida or Massachusetts, or was there no meaningful difference in suicide/crime/drug abuse/dropouts? No doubt there is plenty for countless academic thesis and dissertation projects in the future.

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I’d be careful with the use of that phrase.

I spent a total of 10 seconds finding that study and stopped, and the point of my post wasn’t to debunk the idea that increases in suicides and drug use occasioned the lock down. It was to highlight that on which people want to focus and prioritize. There are a lot of questions about the long-term effects of COVID and plenty of reasons to proceed with caution as society continues to open up. Nothing crazy about that, and I question the motivations of anybody who says so and then wants to highlight these other issues that, as some of the recent posts in this thread point out, are quite murky in terms of cause and effect. That’s the point of my post.

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Exactly.

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There’s irony in that. My own personal theory, based solely on my own interactions with friends, neighbors and loved ones who took that angle on the pandemic, is that most of them represent people who are afraid to be afraid. They are terrified of fear and so tell themselves that everybody else is being hysterical and “freaking out over nothing.” People who take these hard line views don’t really go out of their way to learn about what’s going on. They find like-minded people and join the resistance. I also know a lot of people who just like to resist … everything. They are contrarians by nature. The more popular an idea is the less likely they are to embrace it. And at least here in the US, with the then-prevailing political climate, that notion of being a contrarian was perverted into romantic notions of rugged individualism and patriotism. My eyes have spent a lot of time looking into the back of my head the last two years.

As I’ve written many times before, it was fascinating to observe the various reactions to people in my broader social circle. I learned a lot about them. One thing above all that I have concluded is that the most difficult words for people to express are: “I was wrong about _____.” It just cuts against our grain as a species I guess.

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I think they are a deliberate attempt to evade TOS and any possible repercussions of violating them. I don’t understand why they are even an option on a site that strongly discourages uncivil behavior.

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The emojis are provided by the server host, not CC.

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Don’t know about Sweden. But I do know that New Zealand had one of, if not the most, restrictions/lockdowns in the world. If masking/mandates/lockdowns in the US resulted in a possibly higher suicide rate, New Zealand should have had much higher increase. But they didn’t. Their suicide rate dropped in each of the last 2 years. And with all their lockdowns had one of the lowest death rates in the world. So lockdowns = lower death rates, less suicide, and almost certainly less long-term subsequent chronic disease.

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New Zealand’s strategy was to do very strict but temporary lockdowns until reaching zero domestic transmission, then relaxing all domestic restrictions until an imported case started spreading domestically. They spent more time without domestic restrictions than they did in strict lockdown. Compare to the US, which mostly had continuous partially effective lockdown with no light at the end of the tunnel, resulting in both a higher burden of disease and a higher burden of lockdown restrictions.

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I did read that older people, who are statistically most vulnerable to covid, are actually the least worried about it of any generation. I suppose one good thing about living a long life and going through much adversity is that it gives them perspective on any other problems that arise. Compared to world wars, the great depression, massive infant mortality-well, problems are all relative. My husband’s grandmother lost 4 kids under age 8 in one month due to diphtheria at the end of WW1. My grandparents also lost children young ( and most everyone they knew did). They never took for granted health or peace or long life.

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That wasn’t my point to debunk the Covid data you pulled either, and I mentioned it was useful info (especially for unvaccinated adults), but I guess you didn’t see that comment.

I don’t have any issue believing that the threat of Long Covid is real and that there are things that we do not know. The real problem is that I believe that it is already too late if Long Covid is a truly life altering affliction.

The CDC has already looked at data from blood samples to estimate that 140 million people have already had Covid in the US, and the percentages based off of age (58% of 11 and under, 58% of 12-17 year olds, just under half of those under 49 years old, 37% of 50-64 year olds and 23% of those 65 and over have already had Covid) are unbelievably high. My state has the 2nd highest infection rate listed with over 50% of the population already having a Covid infection.

We will see what happens, but I expect that the worst outcome of Long Covid is that we will end up adapting to control the worst problems medically.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/43-of-americans-have-had-covid-19-cdc-estimates.html

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If only those who are constantly outraged over comparatively minor and temporary inconveniences like mask requirements and short-term online learning shared their sense of perspective.

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