Citation

Leipnik MR, Adu-Prah S. International Journal of Geoinformatics 2021; 17(5).

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021)

DOI

10.52939/ijg.v17i5.1999

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The indirect impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on several public health issues is examined in the context of its impacts on multiple nations around the world. Not all possible health aspects of COVID-19 indirectly related to the disease were examined. The ones addressed included: 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 contradictory health consequences of COVID-19 have been largely negative, these include an increase in suicide, but unexpectedly, an initial reduction and other 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. © 2021, Association for Geoinformation Technology. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

COVID-19; suicide; public health; influenza; health impact; respiratory disease