Pandemic of Paradoxes: The Indirect Global Health Impacts of COVID-19

Abstract

The indirect impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on several public health issues will be examined in the context of its impacts on multiple nations around the world. Not all possible health aspects of COVID-19 that are indirectly related to the disease will be examined. The ones chosen are: I. influenza, II. suicide, III. alcohol consumption, IV. fatal automobile accidents and V. birth rates. In each of these cases COVID-19 has had a paradoxical impact. Although COVID-19 is a dangerous respiratory virus, there has not been a synergism with the influenza virus as initially feared by some public health experts. In fact, there has been a global nonappearance of seasonal flu; a good, though indirect, paradoxical consequence of COVID-19. But most other paradoxical health consequences of COVID-19 have been largely negative, these include an increase in suicide but unexpectedly an initial reduction and changes in suicide patterns in many countries, an increase in alcohol consumption but paradoxically a reduction in beer consumption, some evidence of an increase in fatal automobile accidents (at least on a per mile driven basis) and of monumental long term global consequence, a significant decline in births in many major nations.