Story out of the Boston Herald on hospitals being swamped by psychiatric patients as a result of the lockdowns and COVID hysteria. It is not surprising as the political class and meia have been telling us for a year and a half that the world is a terrible, dangerous place.
COVID-induced job losses, fear and isolation have all taken a toll, as well as delays in seeking care, leading to a regular bottleneck of over 500 patients per day in the state awaiting specialized psychiatric care, according to a survey by the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association conducted this summer.
Patients are also sicker — a new impact of the pandemic — including “patients with severe psychosis, patients with severe depression or other mood symptoms or anxiety that lead to suicidal thoughts, patients coming in after suicide attempts,” said Dr. Sejal Shah, medical psychiatry chief at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
The toll on young people is particularly high. Brad Polumbo writes that college students are literally frightened out of their wits. College used to be fun. Now it's got the feel of an internment camp.
Government restrictions on daily life during the pandemic have fueled a youth mental health crisis . Yet, even with many of these restrictions now lifted, young people are still living in a hysterical state of fear.
Likely as a result of this widespread fear, 61% of students think their schools should impose restrictions on attending parties and large social gatherings.
There’s just one problem: There’s almost no basis for any of these fears, and college students are living scared of their own shadows for no reason.
For one, COVID-19 does not pose and has never posed a high risk of death or hospitalization for individuals of college-age. (With the rare exception of those with preexisting conditions that compromise their immune system, individuals for whom many diseases are life-threatening.) Yes, COVID-19 is a serious virus and has claimed many lives. But the deaths are almost exclusively among those much older than the college demographic.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 6,744,362 Americans aged 18 to 29 have tested positive for COVID-19. Among that same age cohort, an estimated 2,951 have died. These figures allow us to calculate a rough fatality rate of 0.04%. This means that if 10,000 members of this age group contract the virus, four will die. And these rates are assuming no vaccination! The available vaccines are highly effective at preventing infections serious enough to lead to hospitalization or death — even for the delta variant . So, for vaccinated students, the risks are even more minuscule.
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