Hard to be truthful to someone else when you lie to yourself first.
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Out of curiosity, what is your average drinks per day?
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Ok. But you’re basically invoking that people are lying more now then before, just because you don’t like the numbers they show.
How much people lie in polls and to their doctors doesn’t matter so much when clearly people are buying less.
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My doctor is a classic and a good guy. Asked me about frequency per week and amount per time. I fired off a number and as he was entering it I said everyone drinks more than they say.
He said yeah I triple the number they give me. LOL
That’s about right…
Median would be 0. Mean probably 0.3
I just think polls of this type are wildly inaccurate. Also, considering how long it took for behavior modification in tobacco I think the chances of such a huge change in behavior in 2 years is extremely unlikely.
I also have access to much more actual objective data than the average person.
As a former nicotine user and current alcohol user, I promise you stopping alcohol use is exponentially easier than stopping nicotine use unless youre an alcoholic.
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Them publish your data. Otherwise, it’s meaningless to me. The data shows that etoh sales are decreasing and self reported consumption is decreasing.
That this is coming from the guy who posts nonstop in a wine forum and loves to talk about how little he drinks because of health concerns, is a little rich
And I quote you
“ Median would be 0. Mean probably 0.3“
Does that mean you’re lying? Rotflmao
My favorite class in high school, bar none, was called Field Ecology. Twice per semester the class would go camping near Sisters, OR about 3 hours from where I grew up and perform field work to study wildlife populations. After dark, we would all pile into the back of the teachers Dodge Powerwagon (with additional light bar and a 100,000 candlepower spotlight) and go tearing up and down the dirt roads around the study area trying to catch anything that moved (which did happen occasionally, mostly with kangaroo rats).
It was a formative experience for me, if a bit risky (and probably stressful for the kangaroo rats although they were all released unharmed). And it would NEVER be allowed in today’s world.
My RAV4 isn’t a fascist, but it is obnoxious with telling me about cars beside me (and sometimes not actually beside me but outside the parking lot I’m in) and it’s obnoxious with telling me that my bag of groceries needs a seat belt fastened. And in bringing a portable air conditioning unit home from Lowe’s, if the back hatch won’t close fully, tying it shut isn’t really an option anymore if you value you’re hearing….
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Lol. You noticed too?
I lie to my doctor about how much I drink. But the lie number is lower because the actual number is lower. 
I drink about once a month. Most drinkers drink much more frequently than that, although there are certainly some people that only drink socially.
Certainly there is a decrease in drinking since the pandemic; the question is what the reason for it is, which is much more nuanced. I think this is more likely related to a rebound effect from greater macroeconomic trends rather than genuinely related to health concerns.
Do I tbink people should drink less and less often due to health concerns? Absolutely. That hasn’t happened in my experience and in my practice. I will absolutely publish the results of this and other research once it’s ready for publication, however, in order to have actual scientific validity you need a large amount of data and a long follow-up period.
I have extremely low confidence in the average American taking responsibility for their own health.
Another thing if you look at that survey, the biggest decreases were in the lower income groups who are traditionally the lowest information group as well.
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Yes this is how averages work. You’ve made your 6th grade math teacher proud 
My average is quite good but my Friday night is a bender
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Joanne Herron and Shawn Mead forever.
A percentage of a percentage may be a useful, practical tool, but it is really only valid when accompanied by the underlying numbers, which allows one to avoid under- or overestimating the importance of relative risks. That relates in part to @MChang comment about sample size. Nothing pseudo-scientific about that.
Often, when a percentage of a percentage is reported without the underlying numbers it is done to inflate the apparent importance of an association.
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See that in medical studies. A paper states a negative side effect increase of 50%.
For example the control group had a 1% chance of the side effect and the test group had 1.5%
Yeah, that’s 50% but…
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Deleted by op.
A comparison of 1.5% to 1% is bogus even before the division (mentioning it since the statistics police became involved).
Probably you meant 1.0%, If on a large enough sample, I’d say the 50% was meaningful if you were talking about death rates (or the actuarial indicated cost of flood or earthquake insurance).
Not a big deal on TCA spoiled wine rates.
Depends on context. When the numbers are really small, then the precision impacts the calculation. A 1% rate (not 1.0%) can only change by a minimum of +/- 100% .