[hirundo]

It would be nice if public health agencies formally considered the public cost of such atomization from covid lockdowns. They may find in the end that the cost is worth paying, but it should be part of the analysis.

But what kind of study could yield valid, reproducible data about how much atomization is caused by how much lockdown, and how much authoritarianism is caused by how much atomization?

[medium_burrito]

Useful data points I think would include: - Suicides, attempted and successful - Calls to suicide hotlines - Overdoses - Phone call data, assuming a sufficient database of people's relationships -> anecdotally, people are calling each other way less - Following what people are watching online- I bet youtube and facebook have an extremely good measure of how many general segments of viewing population there are, and I bet these have increased. Amazon book sales might do the same. - Alcohol sales, obviously. Friends in the industry say volume has quadrupled while unit price has dropped by a similar magnitude.