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Booze doesn’t kill that quickly

Millions were drinking at harmful levels while stuck at home during lockdown, and alcohol-caused deaths – mostly from liver disease – soared to a 20-year high in 2020.

Therefore we know he’s spouting bollocks. No more need be said.

10 thoughts on “Booze doesn’t kill that quickly”

  1. Depends on what they were drinking, dunnit.

    Roundup and tonic ?
    Paraquat on the rocks ?
    Industrial strength ethanol ?

  2. No Tim, booze doesn’t kill that quickly from a healthy start. It can kill pretty quickly if you’re already an alcoholic and substantially increased consumption during Lockdown. Being imprisoned in a room full of booze can’t be a great idea for someone who already has a problem.

    As for the article, blaming shadowy corporate conspiracies rather than people taking responsibility for their own behaviour is exactly what I expect from the Guardian. Particularly with the hilarious call for nationalisation – because governments would never hurt anyone…

  3. Booze takes years to cause liver disease. But a year of not monitoring liver disease and providing health care will cause a spike in deaths due to liver disease.

  4. Also from the Guardian :

    “There were 8,974 deaths from alcohol specific causes registered in the 12 month period, up from 7,565 deaths in 2019 – the highest year-on-year increase since the data series began in 2001. It bucks a trend in which fatalities from alcohol remained stable for the previous seven years.

    In England, the number of people drinking more than 14 units a week increased after the first national lockdown, according to surveys by PHE, and has remained at similar levels since. As pubs shut, drinking at home soared, with off-licence sales of beer rising 31% and spirits 26% compared with 2019.”

    Those dying would have been well-pickled before the virus arrived. There’s also a rise in kids with liver disease – not booze, but immune systems damaged by the shots.

  5. SBML: ’…a year of not monitoring liver disease and providing health care…’

    Another GP failure that should have the Health Minister looking very hard into overhaul of the system.

    If we had a halfway competent Health Minister, that is.

  6. Could the 2020 spike in deaths be down to it being nigh impossible to get a GP appointment and the hospitals largely not being open to anyone except Covid patients?
    Alternatively did a bunch of alcoholics already in a weakened state of health die from Covid and the deaths are also begin counted as alcohol related?

  7. When I mentioned to my daughter (who was born in Witbank) that, during COVID, South Africa had stopped sales of alcohol, her comment was: “if they do that here, I’ll message my friends and tell them that if they want me, I’ll be at my parents”.

    We’d run out of beer and some of the exotic stuff quite quickly, but gin, whisky and red wine would last for weeks.

  8. Wouldn’t be too sure about that. As others have commented, lockdown could easily have killed any number of otherwise surviving alcoholics. Having some sort of life was what was stopping them drinking themselves to death. Lockdown & subsequent restrictions took that away from them.
    I personally know one person likely died of alcohol during lockdown. Ran out, couldn’t afford more, depressed, topped herself. And several lockdown etc pushed into having drink problems they’re now having to cope with.
    It’s why I’d be in favour of lynching anyone thought lockdowns etc were a good idea. They were survivable if you had the social support structure to do so. Which no doubt all the lockdown enthusiasts had*. A helluva lot of people don’t. They live alone with no-one nearby. Basically they were handed three months solitary without the benefit of the crime or the trial. I spent much of the period trying to help people like this risking prosecution for doing so. And cost me a packet.
    *Or decided the restrictions didn’t apply to them. Like half the fucking government & government advisers

  9. Dennis, Bullshit Detector

    James Wilt, the author of this brainfart, has written a book:

    Drinking Up the Revolution: How to Smash Big Alcohol and Reclaim Working-Class Joy

    You can’t make this shit up.

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