Misinformation regarding COVID-19 refuses to run rampant in the United States, spread through memes and social media, and constantly having to be fact-checked — not that people always listen to facts once they have them.
Tom Brady is the latest caught spreading misinformation on his socials. The quarterback shared on his Instagram story recently that there have been “more suicide deaths than coronavirus deaths [the] last two months.”
“So wash your hands and wear your masks but don’t forget to be nice to people and look after yourself,” the rest of the original post read, with a stamp of “TRUTH” underneath it that was presumably added by Brady.
It is absolutely true that living through months and months of a pandemic that’s been mishandled so badly that we can’t safely get back to anything resembling normal life has taken a serious toll on people in terms of mental health. And there’s certainly no harm in a reminder to be kind to others, especially now.
But the claim that the suicide rate is higher than the COVID death rate is simply false.
PolitiFact came in to share some facts, noting that “in an average month, about 4,000 people die from suicide. In the month of June, over 19,000 people died from the coronavirus. In the past 30 days, nearly 22,000 people died.”
Again, there’s not a single thing wrong with looking out for your friends’ and family’s mental wellbeing during this time, but people who claim COVID-19 is a “liberal hoax” or that we “can’t live in fear” have been using suicide and mental health issues as a reason to push for fully reopening everything and resuming pre-pandemic life since the very beginning. They often claim the harm isolation does to people far outweighs the relentless pace of infection, sickness, and death caused by COVID-19 — numbers they often also falsely claim are being inflated.
That having been said, some people have pointed out we don’t have the current suicide statistics for the past couple months, so while it’s entirely possible the rates have gone up this year, we simple don’t know enough to have a conversation with real numbers right now.
But it’s nearly impossible that the rates jumped from an average of 4,000 a month to over 22,000 to outpace COVID-19 deaths, a sentiment shared by the President of the American Association of Suicidology, Dr. Jonathan Singer.
“There’s no way this can be true,” he said.
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