Lockdowns Responsible for Thousands of Alcohol Deaths – ONS
Christmas is a time for family, rest and reflection, when few people hit the web, read reports and look at what is happening around them.
This is why the timing of the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) “Alcohol-specific deaths in the U.K.: registered in 2021” probably meant little pick up from mainstream media. However, the report contains disturbing facts which should be highlighted to all – it makes for a sobering read.
First, the analysis of deaths related to alcohol is based on internationally assigned codes, so there is little wriggle room for what follows: “Alcohol-specific deaths only include those health conditions where each death is a direct consequence of alcohol.”
Second, as the report’s authors note repeatedly, the figures are likely to be underestimated as they are specifically and directly related to alcohol consumption and do not consider the broader spectrum of alcohol-related pathologies. For example, in which, excessive alcohol consumption did take place, but the cause of death was ischaemic heart disease. But here comes the bad news.
While alcoholic deaths were relatively stable in the decade before 2020 – in 2019 there were 7,565 deaths (11.8 per 100,000 inhabitants) – there has been a sudden increase in 2020, 8,974 deaths (14.0 per 100,000) and 2021, 9,641 deaths (or 14.8 per 100,000) making the 2021 tally 27.4% higher than in 2019.
The authors attribute the increase to the higher use of alcohol during the time restrictions were applied, and the timing is highly suggestive. However, what concerns us is the speed (two years) with which the incidence has picked up.
These are deaths wholly attributable to alcohol, which means that at least 27.4% more of our fellow citizens have drunk themselves to death thanks to the imposition of curtailment of individual freedom. Males die more frequently – twice that of females. Mental disorders and accidental poisoning events were present but played a small part in adding to the tally. Most of the deaths will have been habitual heavy drinkers who found refuge by increasing their daily intake.
No other explanation is possible for the speed of such an increase because alcoholic disease is the result of years of abuse and an abnormal lifestyle. Alcohol-related liver cirrhosis does not develop overnight – it typically develops after heavy drinking for 10 or more years.
The ONS statisticians also issue a stark warning: the consequences of increased exposure to alcohol and lifestyle changes will take some time to manifest themselves fully. This is what they report:
The survey “Wider Impacts of COVID-19 on Health” (WICH) monitoring tool… showed that, as of March 2022, “increasing and higher risk drinking” had remained at heightened levels. Research commissioned by the National Institute for Health Research suggested that if these consumption patterns persist, there could be hundreds of thousands of additional cases of alcohol-related diseases and thousands of extra deaths as a result.
So here we have another documented consequence of the social and democratic catastrophe of lockdowns. There’s plenty of evidence indicating increased consumption of alcohol during lockdowns that were associated with a host of factors, including a deterioration in psychological well-being and one’s finances. Moreover, the problem is not limited to the UK: in an online survey of U.S. adults from May 2020, one-third reported binge drinking, and 7% extreme binge drinking. Similar increases in alcohol use are observed in France and Germany; however, a systematic review shows consumption varied depending on the country.
Any reader suspicious of the timing of the release of the ONS report can be reassured: December is the expected release date of the annual alcohol report on deaths.
Listen to Tom and Carl discuss this post on their podcast.
Dr. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack blog, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.
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As with every other negative consequence of covid folly and evil, predicted here and elsewhere by nutjob conspiracy theorists in March 2020.
This will of course be music to the ears of our WEF middle managers in Downing St. I’m surprised Chunt hasn’t massively reduced the tax on alcohol as a means of raising (sic) the ‘feel good factor’ in these hard times.
I expect the opposite reaction: more restrictions on the sale and consumption of alcohol.
That’s what politicians and bureaucrats do if they are goaded by media into “finding a solution”. More regulation.
They are goaded by media but also I think they like doing stuff for its own sake – it makes them feel useful and important, and they enjoy exercising power. It’s a fundamental problem with those of us who favour small government and minimal intervention – politics isn’t that attractive to people with that mindset, as a career; become PM and do very little.
They’re all obsessed with revolution or ‘change’ in order to leave a legacy. The idea of being a steady hand on the tiller is anathema to them…
I was once talking to a friend of mine who has moved in the corporate world at a fairly high level. We were discussing mergers and acquisitions, and how those responsible for them were always claiming “synergies” and “cost savings” but which in practice often didn’t deliver much of anything other than cost and disruption. I put it to him that a lot of it seemed to me to be fuelled by bored executives looking for something exciting to do. He agreed.
“Something Must Be Done” – unless the Chancellor says no. After all, it’s a reliable source of revenue, with excise duty and VAT on top. Even Sturgeon will understand that, given the income from the distillery trade. Let’s hope so, anyway.
I disagree. When their sinecures and incomes rely on a ‘healthy’ (cough) body count increasing self-induced mortality is a win-win and alcohol duty reduction would still satisfiy the ‘doing something aspect.’
I never understood the drive to end smoking. It makes no sense.
Smoking brings in good tax revenue.
It also apparently kills people early which from a purely financial standpoint is beneficial because it means a quicker death and fewer years of pension both of which cost less than someone who lives long and has a long drawn out end of life.
And it’s a personal choice. If people want to smoke, let them, just as we let people jump off cliffs with wingsuits.
So much of what is wrong with our society can probably be explained by the media whipping up the public and goading politicians into taking action when they should really do nothing.
Doing nothing is grossly undervalued.
Ever heard of a ‘Kill Box’? Katherine Watt did a great job condensing all of her research on the militarization of public health, pertaining to Covid, into these 18 slides;
https://bailiwicknewsarchives.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/kill-box-presentation-1.pdf
Many thanks for that Mogs. Bang in line with our thinking.
I quit alcohol in 2018 – I was a heavy drinker, which was the only way I could cope with the chaos of London. When I fibbed and halved the amount I told the doctor I drank per week during a checkup, the reaction was still one of horror! By the time I moved back to Devon in 2019, I was happily teetotal and not bothered, because life was so much calmer here. I’m so very glad I quit when I did, because I know I would have spent the whole of lockdown drunk or hungover and probably had a mental breakdown, giving I had poorly elderly parents to care for too. As it was, I raged and pounded my fist bloody punching a table when Hancock announced the mask mandate. Several old London friends did turn into (even more) hardcore drinkers and a couple are doing coke heavily too (not the soda drink!) Lockdown did incalculable psychological damage to me. I’ve gone from being a freelancer who was out and about all over London, working for many different companies – and commuting for a week or so at a time, after leaving London – to a freelancer who works… Read more »
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Not just immoral. Anna de Buisseret keeps reminding us that we have been subjected to unlawful psychological programming techniques. The government have broken the Geneva Convention & used torture on the populace.
The government has waged war against the citizens it is meant to protect & keep from harm.
It was in a sense a culimnation. The despair was already there throughout 2018 and 2019 and on an economic level the crash of 2020 was already written in. The defunct man, the civilisation that had nowhere left to go anymore. The pandemic was actually an attempt to keep things alive a couple of years longer, within its own crooked terms of course. This was written in from summer of 2019 in terms of definite plans. Just look at the going direct reset this has been the agenda that has been truly successful. It is like a vampie or a drug addict engaged in more and more desperate acts knowing that quite soon their addiction will destroy them.
It’s really not much of a shock that lockdowns and panic drive people to drink, and sometimes people unfortunately drink themselves to death. Looks like the architects of the lockdowns and panic have even more blood on their hands than we thought!
Party poopers. Drink anyone? Hic!!!
The PHE & NHS or whoever shouts the loudest, will say that if they reduce or eliminate the booze related deaths then they will save millions of pounds in costs to the health service. It is nothing to do with reducing deaths it is about reducing costs, operational costs. These cost are predominantly indicated as medical, so then one can assume the cost reduction will be in medical staff, and not administration. Thus preserving the system and their jobs, not the service of providing health care “Health Care”, a term fast becoming an oxymoron..
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