Cobourg News Blog

10,000 citizens marched down Yonge Street last Saturday in an peaceful anti-lock down protest. This was called a super-spreader event. There were hundreds of anti-Israel protestors demonstrating the same day, displaying disrespect towards the police, chanting anti-Semitic slurs. This was called a social justice event.

If we are to believe the paranoid, there will be a surge of new infections, not just amongst the thousands of demonstrators, but their cross-infection of all the people along Yonge street who will take it home and infect their families. Hogwash. Watch the stats next week, to see if this so-called super spreader event had any impact by increased cases.

“It is too early to tell whether there have been or will be changes in suicide rates in Canada. We need to continue monitoring the situation, implement best practices in suicide prevention, and be careful about oversimplifying complicated circumstances”
COVID-19 and Suicide (mentalhealthcommission.ca)

“• Almost 1 in 5 report they are drinking more alcohol.10-12 • 14% of those between 18 and 34 have increased their consumption of cannabis.”

“Research on past pandemics and epidemics, natural disasters, and economic recessions provide important information on what we should be monitoring and the strategies governments and policy makers, communities, health-care professionals, and the media should be implementing to help prevent an increase in suicide rates”

My father was also in a war zone. He took 15 years of enormous pain and suffering before offing himself — war dreams, in case you didn’t know. Stress doesn’t stop when you leave the battlefield. Sheesh!
=================
Public Health Information (CDC), National Centre for Biotechnology Information. May 2021
Self-harm and the COVID-19 pandemic: A study of factors contributing to self-harm during lockdown restrictions – PubMed (nih.gov)
COVID-related factors were identified as influences in nearly half of individuals presenting to hospitals following self-harm in the period following introduction of lockdown restrictions. Females were particularly affected. The fact that mental health problems, including issues with delivery of care, predominated has implications for organisation of services during such periods. The contribution of isolation, loneliness and sense of entrapment highlight the need for relatives, friends and neighbours to be encouraged to reach out to others, especially those living alone. The classification of COVID-related factors can be used as an aide-memoire for clinicians.

The vast majority of those who serve in a war zone do not “off” themselves.

That’s right. So easy to be dismissive of those who do murder themselves. They are an insignificant minority compared to the vast vast majority.

They adjust to the stresses both while in action and after.

Exactly what my father did while in action. Serving his country, right. The plaque at the Cobourg Legion refers to him as (Daddy) because he took care of the drunken men that they had a blanket when they were passed out and useless to the defence of the nation.

As a Navy medic during WWII, my father encountered horrors that included treating the survivors of the Bhutan Death March and the Burma RR.

My father drove a supply truck over the dead bodies of Mussolini’s fascists while in Italy. He could feel the bump of the body up through the steering wheel, for the rest of his life, the rest of his life. There was zero empathy, lots of cavalier dismissiveness. Be a man. Etc.

Resilience is the key and, unfortunately, we do not all come equally equipped.

My father did not have enduring resilience, so survival of the fittest, my father was weak and no one cared. No one displayed any empathy whatsoever – he’s just a stat now. How unfortunate!

Your myopic focus on the singularity of suicide appears to interfere with your ability to see a larger picture under the category of “self harm”.  

“BOTH Covid19 and the lockdown (which had been in place for over three months at that point) as stressors. There is no indication that any of those patients acted on their ideation.”

They did act on their ideation. The article refers to the 170 patients, male and female, “but there were no differences in age, methods of self-harm or suicide intent between the two groups.
 
The study related to self-harm and suicide intent. There had to be sufficient self-harm to warrant “presenting to hospitals in Oxford and Derby following self-harm.”
 
The study also refers to “nearly half of individuals presenting to hospitals following self-harm”
 
Those are the indications that you deliberately diminished in your faulty ideation of this study.

There is also lots of evidence that the India variant is on its way which is beginning to hit the UK and with a single vaccine dose you are not fully protected.

“I wonder how school aged children and others cope with being indoors a lot more during winter time due to wintry conditions.”

Perhaps parents could give their kids a supply of food colouring, some spray containers and tell them to go outside and colour their world. Simple and cheap.

There are no accurate statistics of actual infections occurring as a result of protests because those that do get infected do not cooperate with health authorities trying to do contact tracing.