"The researchers looked at a large sample size of more than 230,000 “mostly American” patients and examined them for 14 disorders including anxiety, depression, stroke, and dementia. Anxiety was most common, reported in 17 percent of patients, but other disorders were at an elevated risk compared with pre-COVID numbers. Fourteen percent of patients reported mood disorders, seven percent had a stroke, and two percent developed dementia."
This is probably one of those cases where you want to read the paper yourself, instead of relying on the media's take on it. Increased anxiety disorders doesn't surprise me in the least - someone just lived through the worst part of a pandemic after all - but it would be interesting to see how those increased anxiety disorders compare to other sources of trauma. The COVID virus may not be the cause of the disorder, but another element of an overall context that induces anxiety. You'd also want to get a sense of the number of folks who be predicted to suffer from these mood disorders, independent of COVID. (Disclosure: I'm involved as research staff on a couple of projects investigating anxiety and depression generally, but certainly in an unavoidable pandemic context now.)
"There are other disadvantages to long-haul passenger trains as well. For example, if the tracks run from New York to LA, then the train is going from New York to LA, even if most of the passengers ultimately want to go to Seattle. In the case of air travel, more airliners can be added to specific routes to meet demand. Further, airports are huge, sprawling complexes, but the environmental impact of an airport and airliners is almost certainly less than building a rail line across the country."
As an Amtrak fan, the current NY to LA train goes through Chicago (Lake Shore Limited), where the LA branch continues on as the Southwest Chief (a line I take often to NM), and branch goes on to Seattle (Empire Builder), so the routes are already there.
The bigger issue is that Amtrak runs on freight lines across long parts of the country, and freight trains have precedence over passenger trains on their own lines, leading to delays in the middle of nowhere as the freight train uses the same track as the Amtrak train. So, to do high-speed passenger rail lines, you'd also need to update the freight lines to accommodate faster trains, or start to build our parallel infrastructure explicitly dedicated to the high-speed passenger lines.
On the speed side of things, I rather enjoy the time that I spend on a train (as opposed to being cramped up in a plane), so the time spent on the train is more an issue for my schedule as opposed to my enjoyment and comfort. Some more thoughts on the subject here:
Fair point on the first item, although I wonder if stress would lead to more strokes. I think more research needs to be done on the issue. How/if the virus leads to increased mental health problems hasn't been determined. Even if it's stress-related, that undercuts the claim that COVID is no worse than the flu.
On the second, it seems likely that there would need to be dedicated tracks for the high-speed trains, especially if freight has a higher priority.
I think you make a good point that train travel is more enjoyable for the majority of the passengers.
Whether there's a physical mechanism that increases mood disorders or whether the mood disorders arise out of a chaotic context (which you can probably determine experimentally by seeing if mood disorders also increased in a similar manner among folks who did not catch the virus) is relevant when it comes to treatment.
If there's a physical mechanism (COVID fiddles the brain to increase anxiety and depression), that would point you towards physical interventions most likely in the form of drugs that disrupt / repair that damage.
If the mechanism is environmental, then that may increase the efficacy of non-drug interventions, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (train your mind to bring down stress through mental exercises) or talk therapy (get the stress off your chest by discussing it with a therapist). I haven't had a chance to jump into the paper yet, so it'll be interesting to see what their comparison populations are.
"The researchers looked at a large sample size of more than 230,000 “mostly American” patients and examined them for 14 disorders including anxiety, depression, stroke, and dementia. Anxiety was most common, reported in 17 percent of patients, but other disorders were at an elevated risk compared with pre-COVID numbers. Fourteen percent of patients reported mood disorders, seven percent had a stroke, and two percent developed dementia."
This is probably one of those cases where you want to read the paper yourself, instead of relying on the media's take on it. Increased anxiety disorders doesn't surprise me in the least - someone just lived through the worst part of a pandemic after all - but it would be interesting to see how those increased anxiety disorders compare to other sources of trauma. The COVID virus may not be the cause of the disorder, but another element of an overall context that induces anxiety. You'd also want to get a sense of the number of folks who be predicted to suffer from these mood disorders, independent of COVID. (Disclosure: I'm involved as research staff on a couple of projects investigating anxiety and depression generally, but certainly in an unavoidable pandemic context now.)
For readers wanting to dive in, the paper's here:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(21)00084-5/fulltext
"There are other disadvantages to long-haul passenger trains as well. For example, if the tracks run from New York to LA, then the train is going from New York to LA, even if most of the passengers ultimately want to go to Seattle. In the case of air travel, more airliners can be added to specific routes to meet demand. Further, airports are huge, sprawling complexes, but the environmental impact of an airport and airliners is almost certainly less than building a rail line across the country."
As an Amtrak fan, the current NY to LA train goes through Chicago (Lake Shore Limited), where the LA branch continues on as the Southwest Chief (a line I take often to NM), and branch goes on to Seattle (Empire Builder), so the routes are already there.
The bigger issue is that Amtrak runs on freight lines across long parts of the country, and freight trains have precedence over passenger trains on their own lines, leading to delays in the middle of nowhere as the freight train uses the same track as the Amtrak train. So, to do high-speed passenger rail lines, you'd also need to update the freight lines to accommodate faster trains, or start to build our parallel infrastructure explicitly dedicated to the high-speed passenger lines.
On the speed side of things, I rather enjoy the time that I spend on a train (as opposed to being cramped up in a plane), so the time spent on the train is more an issue for my schedule as opposed to my enjoyment and comfort. Some more thoughts on the subject here:
https://www.notesfromthevoid.cc/p/note-32-infrastructure-week
Fair point on the first item, although I wonder if stress would lead to more strokes. I think more research needs to be done on the issue. How/if the virus leads to increased mental health problems hasn't been determined. Even if it's stress-related, that undercuts the claim that COVID is no worse than the flu.
On the second, it seems likely that there would need to be dedicated tracks for the high-speed trains, especially if freight has a higher priority.
I think you make a good point that train travel is more enjoyable for the majority of the passengers.
Whether there's a physical mechanism that increases mood disorders or whether the mood disorders arise out of a chaotic context (which you can probably determine experimentally by seeing if mood disorders also increased in a similar manner among folks who did not catch the virus) is relevant when it comes to treatment.
If there's a physical mechanism (COVID fiddles the brain to increase anxiety and depression), that would point you towards physical interventions most likely in the form of drugs that disrupt / repair that damage.
If the mechanism is environmental, then that may increase the efficacy of non-drug interventions, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (train your mind to bring down stress through mental exercises) or talk therapy (get the stress off your chest by discussing it with a therapist). I haven't had a chance to jump into the paper yet, so it'll be interesting to see what their comparison populations are.