Doctors and mental health professionals are urging the state to lift lockdown orders to save lives.
This is one of the unintended consequences of Stay-At-Home orders that conservatives were mocked for bringing up in March.
The rate of suicide is absolutely staggering. One doctor who called it “unprecedented” said that the medical facility where he works has seen a year’s worth of suicide attempts in just four weeks.
Doctors at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek say they have seen more deaths by suicide during this quarantine period than deaths from the COVID-19 virus.
The head of the trauma in the department believes mental health is suffering so much, it is time to end the shelter-in-place order.
“Personally I think it’s time,” said Dr. Mike deBoisblanc. “I think, originally, this (the shelter-in-place order) was put in place to flatten the curve and to make sure hospitals have the resources to take care of COVID patients.We have the current resources to do that and our other community health is suffering.”…
…”We’ve never seen numbers like this, in such a short period of time,” he said. “I mean we’ve seen a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.”
Officially, the medical center supports the lockdowns to reduce the spread of the virus, but it’s clear that the side effects of the lockdown are causing significant harm.
Job losses, social isolation, and hopelessness are going hand-in-hand with state-imposed lockdown orders. In some states, these orders are being extended far beyond the initial timeframe–“15 Days To Slow The Spread” which became “30 Days To Slow The Spread” to “Lock Down Until There’s A Cure.”
Contra Costa County Crisis Center Executive Director Tom Tamura said that generally speaking, the vast majority of people feel better after calling the crisis line. He also said that although calls are up, they’re not up significantly, which he attributes to people being more isolated from their support network.
“I think people have found themselves disconnected from the normal supportive networks that they have, churches and schools and book clubs, you name it,” Tamura said. “And that, coupled with the closure of some counseling services, people were maybe in a little bit of shock.They were trying to weather the storm a bit but as that isolation has grown people have come to realize this isn’t a sprint it is marathon.”
Source: ABC 7 News (Emphasis Added)
This is utterly heartbreaking. People are intentionally doing harm to themselves because governments have prioritized physical health over mental health.
People are isolated from their social groups which means that someone that might catch a warning sign that something is wrong and urge an individual to make that call to the crisis center just isn’t there to do that. How many suicide attempts could have been stopped just by allowing people to move in their social circles?
When this whole thing began and we didn’t know much about the virus because it was new and China literally destroyed their data to protect reputation, closing things down for a couple of weeks to make sure our healthcare system wasn’t overwhelmed was an acceptable suggestion to protect public health. That was around 70 days ago.
We know more now, and it turns out that a lot of what we knew was wrong.
The lockdowns may have slowed the spread of the virus, but it was never going to stop it completely. Some scientists are saying that the coronavirus will continue to come back as a seasonal illness.
In the meantime, we’ve completely changed our society, schools are shut down, businesses may never reopen, we aren’t allowed to go to church, and the government has chosen which jobs are “essential” and which are not.
But the results of the never-ending lockdowns were inevitable–an increase in suicides, businesses closing, and hopelessness.
It’s time to reopen.
