Increasing alcohol-related deaths

Alcohol consumption, based on ethanol volume estimates, has been rising over the past couple of decades. The pandemic appears to have sped that up, leading to more deaths. For The Washington Post, Caitlin Gilbert, David Ovalle and Hanna Zakharenko report:

At the same time, the number of deaths caused by alcohol skyrocketed nationwide, rising more than 45 percent. In 2021, alcohol was the primary cause of death for more than 54,000 Americans, causing nearly 17,000 more deaths than just a few years before, in 2018, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Weighing the risk of moderate alcohol consumption

A research study on mortality and alcohol consumption is making the rounds. Its main conclusion is that all alcohol consumption is bad for you, because of increased risk. David Spiegelhalter, the chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, offers a different interpretation of the data:

Let’s consider one drink a day (10g, 1.25 UK units) compared to none, for which the authors estimated an extra 4 (918–914) in 100,000 people would experience a (serious) alcohol-related condition.

That means, to experience one extra problem, 25,000 people need to drink 10g alcohol a day for a year, that’s 3,650g a year each.

To put this in perspective, a standard 70cl bottle of gin contains 224 g of alcohol, so 3,650g a year is equivalent to around 16 bottles of gin per person. That’s a total of 400,000 bottles of gin among 25,000 people, being associated with one extra health problem. Which indicates a rather low level of harm in these occasional drinkers.

Therefore:

The paper argues that their conclusions should lead public health bodies “to consider recommendations for abstention”.

But claiming there is no ‘safe’ level does not seem an argument for abstention. There is no safe level of driving, but government do not recommend that people avoid driving.

Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention.

Burn.

See also Spiegelhalter talk about weighing risk against benefits in a video from 2010.

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What Alcohol People Around the World Drink

After seeing Matt Stiles’s bar chart for alcohol consumption in different countries, I felt like it was a lot to scroll through. I really just wanted to look at a handful of countries. I’ve also wanted to take Nadieh Bremer’s gooey effects for a spin.

Combine the two, and it brought me to this:

alcohol-world

It’s definitely not perfect. It’s sluggish in non-Chrome browsers, it glitches now and again as you switch countries, and it’s not the most visually accurate metaphor. But I still like it, if just to mouse around the blobbies.

The “other” category is for beverages like soju in Korea and sake in Japan, which don’t fit into the other three categories.

See the breakdowns for 181 countries.

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