Cure worse than the disease: locked-down Americans became alcoholics

From the Official Newspaper of Lockdown, “Excessive drinking persisted in the years after Covid arrived, according to new data.” (NYT, Nov 11, 2024):

Americans started drinking more as the Covid-19 pandemic got underway. They were stressed, isolated, uncertain — the world as they had known it had changed overnight.

Two years into the disaster, the trend had not abated, researchers reported on Monday.

The percentage of Americans who consumed alcohol, which had already risen from 2018 to 2020, inched up further in 2021 and 2022. And more people reported heavy or binge drinking,

“Early on in the pandemic, we were seeing an enormous surge of people coming in to the clinic and the hospital with alcohol-related problems,” said Dr. Brian P. Lee, a hepatologist at the University of Southern California and the principal investigator of the study, published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

This adds some weight to my oft-expressed theory, starting in March 2020, that American lockdowns and other coronapanic measures would, in the long run, kill far more people than they saved. A person who goes to work in an office is well-separated from the obesity-exacerbating fridge and a stockpile of wine and beer. Co-workers who smell alcohol are likely to inquire. The office environment is thus protective and that protection was lost when the typical state governor made it illegal for Americans to go to work.

Who else noticed this? Donald Trump. From the October 2020 debate with soon-to-be-Genocide-Joe:

I want to open the schools. The transmittal rate to the teachers is very small, but I want to open the schools. We have to open our country. We’re not going to have a country. You can’t do this, we can’t keep this country closed. It is a massive country with a massive economy. People are losing their jobs, they’re committing suicide. There’s depression, alcohol, drugs at a level that nobody’s ever seen before. There’s abuse, tremendous abuse. We have to open our country.

Related:

• from November 16, 2020: #Science proves that I was right (about the need for RFID chips in humans for COVID-19 surveillance)
• from November 13, 2020: Diversity and Inclusion Training for MIT Students (not related, but from the same time period and it is a lot of fun!)

From Teddy Wong’s (excellent) restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas (maybe don’t try this lettering/language if you’re not Chinese…):