Coronavirus DK: Derivative epidemics

Besides the illness and death caused by the coronavirus, some of the measures to mitigate the pandemic also have harmful effects.

A plague of noise
Since the coronavirus epidemic began in Denmark, police have received an increased number of complaints about noisy neighbors and private parties (DK). When restaurants and bars are required to close at midnight, people often continue their socializing elsewhere, in their yards in the suburbs and small towns and in parks or on apartment balconies in the cities. And with the temperature up, people who entertain indoors keep their windows open.

The number of reports has risen 74 percent over the level last year. It is mainly young people with boomboxes who feel a need to congregate at high volume, say the police. The King’s Garden in Copenhagen began closing its gates earlier than usual, at 8 p.m., because “we had to signal that it must not be turned into a festival site,” said Niels Mellergaard of the Palaces and Culture Agency.

Photo by Rajas Chitnis on Unsplash.

CPH hires party monitors
The problem has become so bad in Copenhagen that the city has hired a troop of security guards (DK) to ensure that parties don’t cause sleep deprivation for their neighbors. The police had received complaints about clubs in the city center for years, but “this year the situation is especially bad because the corona restrictions have canceled music festivals and concerts, and bars close earlier or are completely closed,” says Nicolaj Vingtoft Hansen of the Muncipality of Copenhagen. The security guards will be sent out to spots in the city where students and other young people tend to congregate late into the night, and they will advise people to observe pandemic guidelines as well as to moderate their noise level.

Upsurge in waistlines
Three Danish researchers are warning of a secondary epidemic that the coronavirus is exacerbating: overweight and obesity (DK). “Obesity is not just a matter of how much we eat but also our social and psychological conditions,” says Michael Bang Petersen, a professor at Aarhus University who studies biological psychology. “Economic and psychological uncertainty, unemployment and the like cause the body to react with stress and increase fat reserves,” adds Thorkild L. Sørensen, professor at the Metabolism Center at University of Copenhagen.

People are also less active because they are staying home. A study by the Sports Research Institute shows that 38 percent of adults in Denmark have stopped exercising during the crisis. Fitness World, the largest gym chain in the country, reports that it normally would have had 7 million visits in the months when it was closed during the lockdown.

Welfare state mitigates the worst effects
The researchers note, however, that in Denmark the problem is relatively mild because the country’s social welfare system enables it to avoid the worst effects of the pandemic on health. “The greater equality in society and the more security we provide people who are at risk of having their livelihood threatened by the coronavirus, the better,” says Christopher Clemmensen, who studies obesity at the University of Copenhagen. 

Around 51 percent of Danes are overweight, that is, have a BMI above 25, and 17 percent are obese, with a BMI above 30. In comparison, the obesity rate for Germans is 25 percent. In the US, where the obesity rate is over 40 percent and has been a glaring problem for decades, the concerns have focused on the increased risk of death it poses for patients with COVID-19.