Report: Deaths from Alcohol Up Nearly 30 Percent During First Year of Pandemic

Government data shows deaths due to alcohol spiked nearly 30 percent in America during the first year of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, a time that also saw a rise in anxiety and depression.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said those deaths increased in 2020 and 2021, according to an Associated Press (AP) article published on Friday:

A report released Friday focused on more than a dozen kinds of “alcohol-induced” deaths that were wholly blamed on drinking. Examples include alcohol-caused liver or pancreas failure, alcohol poisoning, withdrawal and certain other diseases. There were more than 52,000 such deaths last year, up from 39,000 in 2019.

The rate of such deaths had been increasing in the two decades before the pandemic, by 7% or less each year.

The deaths increased 26 percent in 2020 — the highest increase in approximately 40 years, the study’s lead author, Merianne Spencer, noted.

“Such deaths are 2 1/2 times more common in men than in women, but rose for both in 2020, the study found. The rate continued to be highest for people ages 55 to 64, but rose dramatically for certain other groups, including jumping 42% among women ages 35 to 44,” the AP report said.

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) indicated in March that anxiety and depression increased more than 25 percent in people across the globe during the pandemic, making its effect on mental health devastating.

In a brief, the W.H.O. reported that “the Covid-19 crisis had in many cases significantly impeded access to mental health services and raised concerns about increases in suicidal behaviour,” AFP reported at the time.

In addition, the negative effects of school lockdowns resulted in high rates of students feeling depressed and suffering from developmental and academic stunting, according to Breitbart News.

“Children appear to have taken the brunt of the suffering from draconian lockdown measures and mask mandates in schools, many of which were unnecessary and ineffectual at stopping the spread of the coronavirus but were devastating to the personal development of America’s children,” the outlet said in July.

Another negative outcome of the pandemic was a spike in childhood obesity as chldren were locked down and isolated from others, the CDC reported in September 2021.