<story><title>CDC warns of a steep decline in teen mental health</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/03/31/student-mental-health-decline-cdc/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>theli0nheart</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Omicron absolutely crushed U.S. hospitals -- with some having to set up temporary emergency rooms in their parking structures. Many U.S. hospitals had to put off essential procedures and ran out of practically _everything_ (syringes, saline products, blood, etc.) during the last wave.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t recall this happening. Can you provide a source for this?</text></item><item><author>hh3k0</author><text>&amp;gt; And yet there is scant evidence hospitals ever were at risk.&lt;p&gt;What? Omicron absolutely crushed U.S. hospitals -- with some having to set up temporary emergency rooms in their parking structures. Many U.S. hospitals had to put off essential procedures and ran out of practically _everything_ (syringes, saline products, blood, etc.) during the last wave.</text></item><item><author>spookthesunset</author><text>&amp;gt; From my perspective in the US the lockdowns were about managing hospital capacity&lt;p&gt;And yet there is scant evidence hospitals ever were at risk. We should have relaxed our approach to all this when cities across the country were closing their unused field hospitals. Instead of celebrating the fact that covid wasn&amp;#x27;t nearly as lethal as the earliest models predicted, governors across the country doubled down on their covid restrictions. Two years later, they are finally almost gone.&lt;p&gt;Did any of these restrictions provide enough benefit to justify their immense social cost? It will probably take much cooler heads to find out. It troubles me that we went into this mess with little understanding if the measures even worked. In effect, we took millions and millions of people and had them partake in a massive uncontrolled experiment without anybody&amp;#x27;s consent.</text></item><item><author>after_care</author><text>From my perspective in the US the lockdowns were about managing hospital capacity.  While this might disproportionally benefited older folks, hospitals are a service anyone could need at any time for a wide range of reasons.</text></item><item><author>sva_</author><text>There was a discussion on here, about how the Covid pandemic may have been one of the, or even &lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; biggest transfers of wealth from &amp;quot;the poor&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;the rich&amp;quot; in the history of our civilization. Somebody remarked, that it has also been the biggest transfer of lifetime from the young to the old, as the lockdowns were mostly to protect the old. The measures taken against the pandemic undoubtedly had a huge impact on young people&amp;#x27;s mental health, but the effects of it will only really unfold in the coming years, and are probably not measurable. People who deny this must be willfully ignorant.</text></item><item><author>lumb63</author><text>It astonishes me to see people defending the idea that the pandemic is not a notable component of this. I agree that social media, internet porn, competitive school environment, economic conditions, etc., are all negative influences on teenage mental health. However, to propose that forcing (or, at the least, very strongly encouraging) an entire populace into self-isolation would not have negative impacts for a group in one of the most social and formative times of life, is absurd.&lt;p&gt;Imagine you spent half the time you were in high school, alone. I cannot imagine any rational person is capable of believing this to not be a major factor to their mental health.&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I am a reasonably strong introvert, and I switched teams at my job during the pandemic after nine months of work from home because it did not feel healthy to my mental state to not have interacted with anyone in so long. I felt that my social abilities had atrophied, and that I had lost sight of a lot of the important things in life that derive from social interaction. I can only imagine that the impact is far greater to someone who can&amp;#x27;t choose to change their life to obtain the social interaction they are missing, and who (I am generalizing a bit here) probably requires mental&amp;#x2F;emotional guidance and support from their peers, elders, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sfteus</author><text>Parking lot hospital: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reuters.com&amp;#x2F;world&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;mississippi-hospital-puts-beds-parking-garage-cope-with-covid-19-surge-2021-08-13&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reuters.com&amp;#x2F;world&amp;#x2F;us&amp;#x2F;mississippi-hospital-puts-b...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t seen anything considered &amp;quot;essential&amp;quot; being delayed, but anything that was not &amp;quot;immediately, medically&amp;quot; necessary in Texas was delayed on order of the Governor: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.texastribune.org&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;texas-coronavirus-hospitalizations-elective-surgeries&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.texastribune.org&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;texas-coronavirus-ho...&lt;/a&gt; My mother is a cancer patient and frequently had to delay (what I would consider essential) treatments by request of her provider.&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, as someone married to an RN, supplies were absolutely running low throughout the pandemic. For the first year they were limited to 1 N95 mask per week, they frequently ran out of specific types&amp;#x2F;gauges of needles and had to make do with what was available, certain medications were hard to come by, etc. She doesn&amp;#x27;t work a COVID floor but still more often than not had a double patient load compared to pre-pandemic levels, both due to more patients and less staff. It was also incredibly common seeing people in neighborhood groups trying to find available beds for their family members during our surges, as most people were told there was a wait list expected to last at least 24 hours before something would be available.</text></comment>
<story><title>CDC warns of a steep decline in teen mental health</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/03/31/student-mental-health-decline-cdc/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>theli0nheart</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Omicron absolutely crushed U.S. hospitals -- with some having to set up temporary emergency rooms in their parking structures. Many U.S. hospitals had to put off essential procedures and ran out of practically _everything_ (syringes, saline products, blood, etc.) during the last wave.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t recall this happening. Can you provide a source for this?</text></item><item><author>hh3k0</author><text>&amp;gt; And yet there is scant evidence hospitals ever were at risk.&lt;p&gt;What? Omicron absolutely crushed U.S. hospitals -- with some having to set up temporary emergency rooms in their parking structures. Many U.S. hospitals had to put off essential procedures and ran out of practically _everything_ (syringes, saline products, blood, etc.) during the last wave.</text></item><item><author>spookthesunset</author><text>&amp;gt; From my perspective in the US the lockdowns were about managing hospital capacity&lt;p&gt;And yet there is scant evidence hospitals ever were at risk. We should have relaxed our approach to all this when cities across the country were closing their unused field hospitals. Instead of celebrating the fact that covid wasn&amp;#x27;t nearly as lethal as the earliest models predicted, governors across the country doubled down on their covid restrictions. Two years later, they are finally almost gone.&lt;p&gt;Did any of these restrictions provide enough benefit to justify their immense social cost? It will probably take much cooler heads to find out. It troubles me that we went into this mess with little understanding if the measures even worked. In effect, we took millions and millions of people and had them partake in a massive uncontrolled experiment without anybody&amp;#x27;s consent.</text></item><item><author>after_care</author><text>From my perspective in the US the lockdowns were about managing hospital capacity.  While this might disproportionally benefited older folks, hospitals are a service anyone could need at any time for a wide range of reasons.</text></item><item><author>sva_</author><text>There was a discussion on here, about how the Covid pandemic may have been one of the, or even &lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; biggest transfers of wealth from &amp;quot;the poor&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;the rich&amp;quot; in the history of our civilization. Somebody remarked, that it has also been the biggest transfer of lifetime from the young to the old, as the lockdowns were mostly to protect the old. The measures taken against the pandemic undoubtedly had a huge impact on young people&amp;#x27;s mental health, but the effects of it will only really unfold in the coming years, and are probably not measurable. People who deny this must be willfully ignorant.</text></item><item><author>lumb63</author><text>It astonishes me to see people defending the idea that the pandemic is not a notable component of this. I agree that social media, internet porn, competitive school environment, economic conditions, etc., are all negative influences on teenage mental health. However, to propose that forcing (or, at the least, very strongly encouraging) an entire populace into self-isolation would not have negative impacts for a group in one of the most social and formative times of life, is absurd.&lt;p&gt;Imagine you spent half the time you were in high school, alone. I cannot imagine any rational person is capable of believing this to not be a major factor to their mental health.&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I am a reasonably strong introvert, and I switched teams at my job during the pandemic after nine months of work from home because it did not feel healthy to my mental state to not have interacted with anyone in so long. I felt that my social abilities had atrophied, and that I had lost sight of a lot of the important things in life that derive from social interaction. I can only imagine that the impact is far greater to someone who can&amp;#x27;t choose to change their life to obtain the social interaction they are missing, and who (I am generalizing a bit here) probably requires mental&amp;#x2F;emotional guidance and support from their peers, elders, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spookthesunset</author><text>They can&amp;#x27;t. You&amp;#x27;ll just get links to some NYT article whose main content suggests &amp;quot;we are preparing for a surge&amp;quot; or something of that nature.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve yet to see any kind of actual study that compares hospital capacity during these &amp;quot;surges&amp;quot; vs hospital capacity in the &amp;quot;before times&amp;quot;. Also I strongly suspect future research will show that most of the hospital issues were self-inflicted wounds. We tested everybody who came into the hospital and invoked crazy high-overhead processes for positive results irregardless of symptoms.&lt;p&gt;The entire two years of this I&amp;#x27;ve been waiting for a single instance of an overflowing hospital with stretchers of people out the door... never seen one yet. There has never been a real issue of hospital capacity--at least in the US anyway.</text></comment>