Connect with us

Government

We asked 70,000 people how coronavirus affected them – what they told us revealed a lot about inequality in the UK

Since the pandemic began, we’ve surveyed ordinary people to see how they’re coping. People from poorer backgrounds, ethnic minorities and young people are suffering most.

Published

on

The UK has passed the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths from COVID-19. And as the latest lockdown drags on, the inequalities that have characterised the trajectory of the COVID-19 epidemic are becoming starker than ever.

When coronavirus first arrived in the UK in spring 2020, British politicians called for teamwork and unity. It was proposed that COVID-19, as a “common enemy”, would align Britain and other nations like never before. “We are all in this together,” went the common refrain.

Broad messages of togetherness and cooperation are crucial for the success of public health campaigns – but they also imply that everyone is equally able to meet such expectations. Yet the UK’s demographic diversity means not everyone shares similar experiences during the pandemic. Far from it.

These are the issues my team is exploring at the Department of Behavioural Science and Health at University College London. Since March, we have been running the COVID-19 Social Study, which tracks the everyday experiences of more than 70,000 people around the UK through regular online surveys.

Every week we learn how people are feeling, how they are responding to restrictions, and what difficulties they are facing. We are gathering detailed information on everything from whether people are getting enough sleep to their risks of suffering loneliness.

Through studying these 70,000 people, we have found that someone’s experience of the crisis is largely dependent on their life situation prior to the lockdown. Our research shows that ethnic minorities, those who are financially vulnerable, those who come from lower socioeconomic positions and young people are struggling much more than those with greater social privilege.

This research supports the findings of other studies which show how COVID-19 has exacerbated societal inequalities, and it also identifies clear patterns of inequalities along racial lines.


This article is part of Conversation Insights
The Insights team generates long-form journalism derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.


Our research highlights how crucial it is for the UK government to follow behavioural scientists’ insights into individual experiences. Rules to manage this virus and corresponding rhetoric and communications need to suit the realities of the public if we want to increase compliance and trust in authorities.

People are looking to leaders for guidance and solutions that are feasible and sensitive to their needs. But our findings show that, at the moment, this is not happening.

The unequal impact of lockdown

As we began to collect data in the first month of the UK lockdown, we immediately saw trends that suggested that people of lower socioeconomic position, or SEP, would struggle more.

Generally speaking, SEP refers to an individual’s position in society and their level of power or vulnerability given their resources. It depends on a range of factors, which in our studies include household income, educational qualifications, employment status, housing tenure and household overcrowding.

We found that those in low-income households and those who live in overcrowded conditions had less knowledge of COVID-19, felt less confident about accessing essentials such as food and medicine, and reported more factors that caused them stress.

One of our earliest studies on the topic supported these initial trends. It looked at 12,500 adults between March 25 and April 14. We gathered information on the number and types of difficulties people faced, how these related to their socioeconomic position, and how this changed during the first few weeks of lockdown.

We examined people’s financial stress: whether they or their partners had lost work or income and were struggling to pay bills; any difficulties regarding their basic needs such as food, medicine, and accommodation; and their experience of the virus, contracting it, or having someone close to them hospitalised or dying from it.

We found that there was a clear gradient across the number of adverse events experienced each week. Those who came from low SEP backgrounds experienced more adversity, particularly financial hardship and difficulties in accessing food and medication. This situation did not improve during the first few weeks of lockdown. Compared to those with higher SEP, people of low SEP were:

  • 1.5 times more likely to report loss of work and twice as likely to report a partner’s loss of work
  • 7.2 times more likely to be unable to pay bills, which increased to 8.7 times by the third week
  • 4.1 times more likely to be unable to access sufficient food, increasing to 4.9 times in week three
  • 2.5 times more likely to be unable to access required medication.

This suggests that efforts by the government to assist the public financially through furlough schemes or other initiatives did not go far enough – either not reaching the people who needed the most help in the first few weeks of the lockdown or being insufficient to properly address their adversities.

As the lockdown continued, we discovered that it had brought more hardship to those who were already struggling to live comfortably before the pandemic. By mid-July, it was apparent that, among those who found their financial situation very difficult before the lockdown, 57% reported that things were even worse. By November, this figure was 70%.

By contrast, only 20% of people who were living comfortably before the lockdown felt that they were worse off in November. About 27% of them actually said that their financial situation had improved due to reduced household spending, returns from investments, or directly profiting from financial opportunities provided by the pandemic. Only 7%-10% of people in difficult or very difficult financial situations reported an improvement during lockdown.

This has considerable policy implications for the UK’s current lockdown, with an end date that is uncertain. Stay-at-home orders disproportionately harm people who are already financially vulnerable, so lockdown provisions need to include more financial buffers or alternative financial options for people of low SEP if we want to avoid these inequalities widening further as this pandemic continues.

These financial solutions need to take account of the immediate hardship that people might face due to loss of work if they are forced to isolate, as well as the challenges they then might face finding future work in a challenging job market.

Poorer mental health overall

Early on in the crisis, researchers warned of two parallel epidemics: that of COVID-19, and one of poor mental health. This was concerning given that conditions such as anxiety and depression were already significant problems among the population – a quarter of adults are thought to have at least one diagnosable mental health problem per year.

We have tracked mental health since the beginning of the first lockdown in the UK. Our data shows that individuals’ mental health is affected not only by experiencing adversities such as financial strain, unemployment, and infection with the virus, but also by worrying about these consequences.

Mental health status is also driven by our work and living situations. Again, we found that SEP played a significant role in this. When we assessed symptoms of depression in the early weeks of lockdown, we found that low SEP was significantly associated with severe symptoms of depression.

Graph showing thoughts of self-harm throughout the pandemic

Low household income, in particular, correlates with higher rates of depression and anxiety. Levels of anxiety and depression on average improved for adults in the UK across the first lockdown and the summer of 2020, but levels remained consistently higher among people with low household income.

Throughout the first lockdown, low income was also consistently linked with more severe mental health issues, such as suicidal ideation and self-harm. Those suffering socioeconomic disadvantage or unemployment were also more likely to report physical abuse. However, such experiences have remained relatively stable throughout the period, making their relationship with the pandemic unclear.

Graph showing thoughts of death throughout the pandemic

A relatively high proportion of people thought about death in general, which is unsurprising during a pandemic.

Mental health among ethnic minority groups

As we explored risk factors for poor mental health, we found clear inequalities not just in terms of SEP, but also according to ethnicity.

So far, our work has placed people in two groups: white ethnicity and those from black, Asian and other ethnic minority backgrounds. We recognise that this is not fully representative of the UK’s ethnic diversity and we intend to work on racial subgroups as the study progresses. However, with these groups in place, we have nonetheless been able to begin to unpack the disparities in experiences between white people and those from ethnic minority backgrounds.

We have found that people from ethnic minority backgrounds have had poorer experiences across almost all measures in our study. These include confidence in the government and belief that health services could cope with the crisis, as well as depression, anxiety, stress, thoughts of death, self-harm, abuse, life satisfaction, loneliness and happiness.

Graph showing changes in mental health throughout the pandemic

Among these, mental health stands out. About half of adults from ethnic minority backgrounds reported poorer mental health as a result of the pandemic. In comparison, only 35% of white participants reported worse mental health, indicating that ethnic minority groups experienced a disproportionate psychological burden. This has come in the form of anxiety, depression and low levels of life satisfaction, none of which have affected white people to the same extent.

Loneliness has also been higher for ethnic minorities: 23% often felt lonely compared to 17% of white people. Worries about unemployment and financial stress are also more common among ethnic minorities, of whom one in four reported such concerns. The ratio among white groups was half that.

Graph showing experience of discrimination throughout the pandemic

In considering why we see these differences, there are two main explanations.

First, people from ethnic minority groups are disproportionately more likely to be of low SEP. Therefore they can experience the socio-economic burdens we have discussed above in higher levels to people of white ethnicity. Second, people from ethnic minority backgrounds have reported higher rates of being discriminated against across the pandemic – 42% of people experienced discrimination compared to 24% of people of white ethnicity.

Graph showing experience of discrimination throughout the pandemic

While discrimination could be for a range of reasons such as age, gender and disability, a large proportion of people from minority communities attributed their discrimination to ethnicity reasons. Given the worse levels of mental health, this is concerning, as higher levels of discrimination can act as triggers for depression, anxiety, and unhappiness.

Young people

A third key group to consider is young adults – those aged between 18 and 29. Since the start of the first UK lockdown, we have continued to collect data that demonstrates the discrepancies they face in mental health and wellbeing. Even before the pandemic, young adults were more likely to have poor mental health, and our findings indicate that the pandemic has exacerbated this.

In particular, young adults’ loneliness levels increased with the onset of the pandemic. The age group was already more likely than older people to feel lonely and this risk increased in the early months of the lockdown. Students, especially, were more at risk of loneliness than before the lockdown. For six weeks, levels did not improve and only by mid-May did we begin to see a slight decline in feelings of loneliness. As things stand, this age group continues to be the most lonely.

Graph showing experience of loneliness throughout the pandemic

Young peoples’ levels of anxiety and depression have also been significantly higher.

In the first 20 weeks of lockdown there was gradual improvement, but it is important to note that anxiety and depression fell from higher-than-normal levels of anxiety and depression that probably rose in the lead up to the lockdown. Currently, the group is still reporting much higher rates than other age groups.

Graph showing experience of depression throughout the pandemic

This has significant policy implications. If lockdowns and social isolation continue to be the main strategy for disease control, we need to take into account that young people face more total loneliness, depression, and anxiety than other age groups. They have also been less happy and less satisfied with their lives. This is perhaps unsurprising given they have faced the greatest upheaval over the past year, with disruptions to education, challenges in securing and maintaining employment, and unstable accommodation.

Young people have also been blamed for driving the spread of COVID-19. This is despite the fact that some of their compliance behaviours are in fact better than other age groups.

As we are forced back inside our homes, we should consider how to help this group that is already vulnerable to psychological difficulties. Young people need ways to interact or gain mental health support, even if they do so online or in socially distant environments. They also need support, stability and understanding.

If we don’t consider these actions, the government may have to manage poorer compliance from young people. Our research suggests that confidence in the government is the most significant predictor of compliance. Young people are already less confident in the government than other age groups, and with decreasing levels of wellbeing that are likely to ensue as we isolate further, they are more likely to ignore COVID-19 guidelines. Helping them manage their mental health is important both for their wellbeing and for disease control overall.

Accounting for inequality

Despite the attempts of leaders to create a sense of unity and togetherness during the pandemic, the truth is we are not all living the same reality. Such rhetoric does not change the experiences of vulnerable groups who entered the pandemic at a disadvantage and have continued to suffer the greatest consequences of the lockdown.

Our research has shown that people from low socioeconomic backgrounds have been disproportionately hurt by restrictions; that people from ethnic minority groups have faced more challenges than white ethnicities; and that the mental health of young adults has been hit particularly hard. Individuals who fall into two or more of these groups need to be most carefully considered for support.

While informed, broad-sweeping measures are required to tackle a national health crisis, the inequalities faced by so many in the UK need to be considered more carefully so that further harm is prevented and government expectations are appropriate and realistic for everyone. Effective control measures are sensitive ones that take into account the individual experiences of those who follow them.

The government would serve its population well if it showed greater appreciation for the struggles of people from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds. When lockdowns are implemented, it is important to realise just how much people with low SEP are affected. Slow, moderate, and unspecific attempts to alleviate economies by geographical region rather than by focusing on the most vulnerable will likely have little impact on these inequalities.

Any future measures to stop the spread of the virus must ambitiously focus on how to prevent people from moving from a position of precarious financial strain to further ruin and to improve the mental health of ethnic minority groups and young people. This is essential for future waves of this pandemic and potential future health emergencies.

Prioritising these groups will lead to greater compliance, less economic hardship for individuals and society as a whole, and the slowing of the spread of COVID-19. In contrast, unspecific, insensitive and universal rhetoric or restrictions will harm everyone’s efforts to end this pandemic.


For you: more from our Insights series:

To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. Subscribe to our newsletter.

Daisy Fancourt receives funding from the Nuffield Foundation, Wellcome and UK Research and Innovation.

Alexandra Bradbury does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Read More

Continue Reading

Spread & Containment

Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched

Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

"Beware the Ides of March,” Shakespeare…

Published

on

Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

"Beware the Ides of March,” Shakespeare quotes the soothsayer’s warning Julius Caesar about what turned out to be an impending assassination on March 15. The death of American liberty happened around the same time four years ago, when the orders went out from all levels of government to close all indoor and outdoor venues where people gather. 

It was not quite a law and it was never voted on by anyone. Seemingly out of nowhere, people who the public had largely ignored, the public health bureaucrats, all united to tell the executives in charge – mayors, governors, and the president – that the only way to deal with a respiratory virus was to scrap freedom and the Bill of Rights. 

And they did, not only in the US but all over the world. 

The forced closures in the US began on March 6 when the mayor of Austin, Texas, announced the shutdown of the technology and arts festival South by Southwest. Hundreds of thousands of contracts, of attendees and vendors, were instantly scrapped. The mayor said he was acting on the advice of his health experts and they in turn pointed to the CDC, which in turn pointed to the World Health Organization, which in turn pointed to member states and so on. 

There was no record of Covid in Austin, Texas, that day but they were sure they were doing their part to stop the spread. It was the first deployment of the “Zero Covid” strategy that became, for a time, official US policy, just as in China. 

It was never clear precisely who to blame or who would take responsibility, legal or otherwise. 

This Friday evening press conference in Austin was just the beginning. By the next Thursday evening, the lockdown mania reached a full crescendo. Donald Trump went on nationwide television to announce that everything was under control but that he was stopping all travel in and out of US borders, from Europe, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. American citizens would need to return by Monday or be stuck. 

Americans abroad panicked while spending on tickets home and crowded into international airports with waits up to 8 hours standing shoulder to shoulder. It was the first clear sign: there would be no consistency in the deployment of these edicts. 

There is no historical record of any American president ever issuing global travel restrictions like this without a declaration of war. Until then, and since the age of travel began, every American had taken it for granted that he could buy a ticket and board a plane. That was no longer possible. Very quickly it became even difficult to travel state to state, as most states eventually implemented a two-week quarantine rule. 

The next day, Friday March 13, Broadway closed and New York City began to empty out as any residents who could went to summer homes or out of state. 

On that day, the Trump administration declared the national emergency by invoking the Stafford Act which triggers new powers and resources to the Federal Emergency Management Administration. 

In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a classified document, only to be released to the public months later. The document initiated the lockdowns. It still does not exist on any government website.

The White House Coronavirus Response Task Force, led by the Vice President, will coordinate a whole-of-government approach, including governors, state and local officials, and members of Congress, to develop the best options for the safety, well-being, and health of the American people. HHS is the LFA [Lead Federal Agency] for coordinating the federal response to COVID-19.

Closures were guaranteed:

Recommend significantly limiting public gatherings and cancellation of almost all sporting events, performances, and public and private meetings that cannot be convened by phone. Consider school closures. Issue widespread ‘stay at home’ directives for public and private organizations, with nearly 100% telework for some, although critical public services and infrastructure may need to retain skeleton crews. Law enforcement could shift to focus more on crime prevention, as routine monitoring of storefronts could be important.

In this vision of turnkey totalitarian control of society, the vaccine was pre-approved: “Partner with pharmaceutical industry to produce anti-virals and vaccine.”

The National Security Council was put in charge of policy making. The CDC was just the marketing operation. That’s why it felt like martial law. Without using those words, that’s what was being declared. It even urged information management, with censorship strongly implied.

The timing here is fascinating. This document came out on a Friday. But according to every autobiographical account – from Mike Pence and Scott Gottlieb to Deborah Birx and Jared Kushner – the gathered team did not meet with Trump himself until the weekend of the 14th and 15th, Saturday and Sunday. 

According to their account, this was his first real encounter with the urge that he lock down the whole country. He reluctantly agreed to 15 days to flatten the curve. He announced this on Monday the 16th with the famous line: “All public and private venues where people gather should be closed.”

This makes no sense. The decision had already been made and all enabling documents were already in circulation. 

There are only two possibilities. 

One: the Department of Homeland Security issued this March 13 HHS document without Trump’s knowledge or authority. That seems unlikely. 

Two: Kushner, Birx, Pence, and Gottlieb are lying. They decided on a story and they are sticking to it. 

Trump himself has never explained the timeline or precisely when he decided to greenlight the lockdowns. To this day, he avoids the issue beyond his constant claim that he doesn’t get enough credit for his handling of the pandemic.

With Nixon, the famous question was always what did he know and when did he know it? When it comes to Trump and insofar as concerns Covid lockdowns – unlike the fake allegations of collusion with Russia – we have no investigations. To this day, no one in the corporate media seems even slightly interested in why, how, or when human rights got abolished by bureaucratic edict. 

As part of the lockdowns, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which was and is part of the Department of Homeland Security, as set up in 2018, broke the entire American labor force into essential and nonessential.

They also set up and enforced censorship protocols, which is why it seemed like so few objected. In addition, CISA was tasked with overseeing mail-in ballots. 

Only 8 days into the 15, Trump announced that he wanted to open the country by Easter, which was on April 12. His announcement on March 24 was treated as outrageous and irresponsible by the national press but keep in mind: Easter would already take us beyond the initial two-week lockdown. What seemed to be an opening was an extension of closing. 

This announcement by Trump encouraged Birx and Fauci to ask for an additional 30 days of lockdown, which Trump granted. Even on April 23, Trump told Georgia and Florida, which had made noises about reopening, that “It’s too soon.” He publicly fought with the governor of Georgia, who was first to open his state. 

Before the 15 days was over, Congress passed and the president signed the 880-page CARES Act, which authorized the distribution of $2 trillion to states, businesses, and individuals, thus guaranteeing that lockdowns would continue for the duration. 

There was never a stated exit plan beyond Birx’s public statements that she wanted zero cases of Covid in the country. That was never going to happen. It is very likely that the virus had already been circulating in the US and Canada from October 2019. A famous seroprevalence study by Jay Bhattacharya came out in May 2020 discerning that infections and immunity were already widespread in the California county they examined. 

What that implied was two crucial points: there was zero hope for the Zero Covid mission and this pandemic would end as they all did, through endemicity via exposure, not from a vaccine as such. That was certainly not the message that was being broadcast from Washington. The growing sense at the time was that we all had to sit tight and just wait for the inoculation on which pharmaceutical companies were working. 

By summer 2020, you recall what happened. A restless generation of kids fed up with this stay-at-home nonsense seized on the opportunity to protest racial injustice in the killing of George Floyd. Public health officials approved of these gatherings – unlike protests against lockdowns – on grounds that racism was a virus even more serious than Covid. Some of these protests got out of hand and became violent and destructive. 

Meanwhile, substance abuse rage – the liquor and weed stores never closed – and immune systems were being degraded by lack of normal exposure, exactly as the Bakersfield doctors had predicted. Millions of small businesses had closed. The learning losses from school closures were mounting, as it turned out that Zoom school was near worthless. 

It was about this time that Trump seemed to figure out – thanks to the wise council of Dr. Scott Atlas – that he had been played and started urging states to reopen. But it was strange: he seemed to be less in the position of being a president in charge and more of a public pundit, Tweeting out his wishes until his account was banned. He was unable to put the worms back in the can that he had approved opening. 

By that time, and by all accounts, Trump was convinced that the whole effort was a mistake, that he had been trolled into wrecking the country he promised to make great. It was too late. Mail-in ballots had been widely approved, the country was in shambles, the media and public health bureaucrats were ruling the airwaves, and his final months of the campaign failed even to come to grips with the reality on the ground. 

At the time, many people had predicted that once Biden took office and the vaccine was released, Covid would be declared to have been beaten. But that didn’t happen and mainly for one reason: resistance to the vaccine was more intense than anyone had predicted. The Biden administration attempted to impose mandates on the entire US workforce. Thanks to a Supreme Court ruling, that effort was thwarted but not before HR departments around the country had already implemented them. 

As the months rolled on – and four major cities closed all public accommodations to the unvaccinated, who were being demonized for prolonging the pandemic – it became clear that the vaccine could not and would not stop infection or transmission, which means that this shot could not be classified as a public health benefit. Even as a private benefit, the evidence was mixed. Any protection it provided was short-lived and reports of vaccine injury began to mount. Even now, we cannot gain full clarity on the scale of the problem because essential data and documentation remains classified. 

After four years, we find ourselves in a strange position. We still do not know precisely what unfolded in mid-March 2020: who made what decisions, when, and why. There has been no serious attempt at any high level to provide a clear accounting much less assign blame. 

Not even Tucker Carlson, who reportedly played a crucial role in getting Trump to panic over the virus, will tell us the source of his own information or what his source told him. There have been a series of valuable hearings in the House and Senate but they have received little to no press attention, and none have focus on the lockdown orders themselves. 

The prevailing attitude in public life is just to forget the whole thing. And yet we live now in a country very different from the one we inhabited five years ago. Our media is captured. Social media is widely censored in violation of the First Amendment, a problem being taken up by the Supreme Court this month with no certainty of the outcome. The administrative state that seized control has not given up power. Crime has been normalized. Art and music institutions are on the rocks. Public trust in all official institutions is at rock bottom. We don’t even know if we can trust the elections anymore. 

In the early days of lockdown, Henry Kissinger warned that if the mitigation plan does not go well, the world will find itself set “on fire.” He died in 2023. Meanwhile, the world is indeed on fire. The essential struggle in every country on earth today concerns the battle between the authority and power of permanent administration apparatus of the state – the very one that took total control in lockdowns – and the enlightenment ideal of a government that is responsible to the will of the people and the moral demand for freedom and rights. 

How this struggle turns out is the essential story of our times. 

CODA: I’m embedding a copy of PanCAP Adapted, as annotated by Debbie Lerman. You might need to download the whole thing to see the annotations. If you can help with research, please do.

*  *  *

Jeffrey Tucker is the author of the excellent new book 'Life After Lock-Down'

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/11/2024 - 23:40

Read More

Continue Reading

Government

CDC Warns Thousands Of Children Sent To ER After Taking Common Sleep Aid

CDC Warns Thousands Of Children Sent To ER After Taking Common Sleep Aid

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A…

Published

on

CDC Warns Thousands Of Children Sent To ER After Taking Common Sleep Aid

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) paper released Thursday found that thousands of young children have been taken to the emergency room over the past several years after taking the very common sleep-aid supplement melatonin.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 23, 2020. (Tami Chappell/AFP via Getty Images)

The agency said that melatonin, which can come in gummies that are meant for adults, was implicated in about 7 percent of all emergency room visits for young children and infants “for unsupervised medication ingestions,” adding that many incidents were linked to the ingestion of gummy formulations that were flavored. Those incidents occurred between the years 2019 and 2022.

Melatonin is a hormone produced by the human body to regulate its sleep cycle. Supplements, which are sold in a number of different formulas, are generally taken before falling asleep and are popular among people suffering from insomnia, jet lag, chronic pain, or other problems.

The supplement isn’t regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and does not require child-resistant packaging. However, a number of supplement companies include caps or lids that are difficult for children to open.

The CDC report said that a significant number of melatonin-ingestion cases among young children were due to the children opening bottles that had not been properly closed or were within their reach. Thursday’s report, the agency said, “highlights the importance of educating parents and other caregivers about keeping all medications and supplements (including gummies) out of children’s reach and sight,” including melatonin.

The approximately 11,000 emergency department visits for unsupervised melatonin ingestions by infants and young children during 2019–2022 highlight the importance of educating parents and other caregivers about keeping all medications and supplements (including gummies) out of children’s reach and sight.

The CDC notes that melatonin use among Americans has increased five-fold over the past 25 years or so. That has coincided with a 530 percent increase in poison center calls for melatonin exposures to children between 2012 and 2021, it said, as well as a 420 percent increase in emergency visits for unsupervised melatonin ingestion by young children or infants between 2009 and 2020.

Some health officials advise that children under the age of 3 should avoid taking melatonin unless a doctor says otherwise. Side effects include drowsiness, headaches, agitation, dizziness, and bed wetting.

Other symptoms of too much melatonin include nausea, diarrhea, joint pain, anxiety, and irritability. The supplement can also impact blood pressure.

However, there is no established threshold for a melatonin overdose, officials have said. Most adult melatonin supplements contain a maximum of 10 milligrams of melatonin per serving, and some contain less.

Many people can tolerate even relatively large doses of melatonin without significant harm, officials say. But there is no antidote for an overdose. In cases of a child accidentally ingesting melatonin, doctors often ask a reliable adult to monitor them at home.

Dr. Cora Collette Breuner, with the Seattle Children’s Hospital at the University of Washington, told CNN that parents should speak with a doctor before giving their children the supplement.

“I also tell families, this is not something your child should take forever. Nobody knows what the long-term effects of taking this is on your child’s growth and development,” she told the outlet. “Taking away blue-light-emitting smartphones, tablets, laptops, and television at least two hours before bed will keep melatonin production humming along, as will reading or listening to bedtime stories in a softly lit room, taking a warm bath, or doing light stretches.”

In 2022, researchers found that in 2021, U.S. poison control centers received more than 52,000 calls about children consuming worrisome amounts of the dietary supplement. That’s a six-fold increase from about a decade earlier. Most such calls are about young children who accidentally got into bottles of melatonin, some of which come in the form of gummies for kids, the report said.

Dr. Karima Lelak, an emergency physician at Children’s Hospital of Michigan and the lead author of the study published in 2022 by the CDC, found that in about 83 percent of those calls, the children did not show any symptoms.

However, other children had vomiting, altered breathing, or other symptoms. Over the 10 years studied, more than 4,000 children were hospitalized, five were put on machines to help them breathe, and two children under the age of two died. Most of the hospitalized children were teenagers, and many of those ingestions were thought to be suicide attempts.

Those researchers also suggested that COVID-19 lockdowns and virtual learning forced more children to be at home all day, meaning there were more opportunities for kids to access melatonin. Also, those restrictions may have caused sleep-disrupting stress and anxiety, leading more families to consider melatonin, they suggested.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/11/2024 - 21:40

Read More

Continue Reading

International

Red Candle In The Wind

Red Candle In The Wind

By Benjamin PIcton of Rabobank

February non-farm payrolls superficially exceeded market expectations on Friday by…

Published

on

Red Candle In The Wind

By Benjamin PIcton of Rabobank

February non-farm payrolls superficially exceeded market expectations on Friday by printing at 275,000 against a consensus call of 200,000. We say superficially, because the downward revisions to prior months totalled 167,000 for December and January, taking the total change in employed persons well below the implied forecast, and helping the unemployment rate to pop two-ticks to 3.9%. The U6 underemployment rate also rose from 7.2% to 7.3%, while average hourly earnings growth fell to 0.2% m-o-m and average weekly hours worked languished at 34.3, equalling pre-pandemic lows.

Undeterred by the devil in the detail, the algos sprang into action once exchanges opened. Market darling NVIDIA hit a new intraday high of $974 before (presumably) the humans took over and sold the stock down more than 10% to close at $875.28. If our suspicions are correct that it was the AIs buying before the humans started selling (no doubt triggering trailing stops on the way down), the irony is not lost on us.

The 1-day chart for NVIDIA now makes for interesting viewing, because the red candle posted on Friday presents quite a strong bearish engulfing signal. Volume traded on the day was almost double the 15-day simple moving average, and similar price action is observable on the 1-day charts for both Intel and AMD. Regular readers will be aware that we have expressed incredulity in the past about the durability the AI thematic melt-up, so it will be interesting to see whether Friday’s sell off is just a profit-taking blip, or a genuine trend reversal.

AI equities aside, this week ought to be important for markets because the BTFP program expires today. That means that the Fed will no longer be loaning cash to the banking system in exchange for collateral pledged at-par. The KBW Regional Banking index has so far taken this in its stride and is trading 30% above the lows established during the mini banking crisis of this time last year, but the Fed’s liquidity facility was effectively an exercise in can-kicking that makes regional banks a sector of the market worth paying attention to in the weeks ahead. Even here in Sydney, regulators are warning of external risks posed to the banking sector from scheduled refinancing of commercial real estate loans following sharp falls in valuations.

Markets are sending signals in other sectors, too. Gold closed at a new record-high of $2178/oz on Friday after trading above $2200/oz briefly. Gold has been going ballistic since the Friday before last, posting gains even on days where 2-year Treasury yields have risen. Gold bugs are buying as real yields fall from the October highs and inflation breakevens creep higher. This is particularly interesting as gold ETFs have been recording net outflows; suggesting that price gains aren’t being driven by a retail pile-in. Are gold buyers now betting on a stagflationary outcome where the Fed cuts without inflation being anchored at the 2% target? The price action around the US CPI release tomorrow ought to be illuminating.

Leaving the day-to-day movements to one side, we are also seeing further signs of structural change at the macro level. The UK budget last week included a provision for the creation of a British ISA. That is, an Individual Savings Account that provides tax breaks to savers who invest their money in the stock of British companies. This follows moves last year to encourage pension funds to head up the risk curve by allocating 5% of their capital to unlisted investments.

As a Hail Mary option for a government cruising toward an electoral drubbing it’s a curious choice, but it’s worth highlighting as cash-strapped governments increasingly see private savings pools as a funding solution for their spending priorities.

Of course, the UK is not alone in making creeping moves towards financial repression. In contrast to announcements today of increased trade liberalisation, Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers has in the recent past flagged his interest in tapping private pension savings to fund state spending priorities, including defence, public housing and renewable energy projects. Both the UK and Australia appear intent on finding ways to open up the lungs of their economies, but government wants more say in directing private capital flows for state goals.

So, how far is the blurring of the lines between free markets and state planning likely to go? Given the immense and varied budgetary (and security) pressures that governments are facing, could we see a re-up of WWII-era Victory bonds, where private investors are encouraged to do their patriotic duty by directly financing government at negative real rates?

That would really light a fire under the gold market.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/11/2024 - 19:00

Read More

Continue Reading

Trending