Second, alcohol consumption during the lockdown was compared with alcohol consumption in previous years among the same population. For that purpose, data from the Lifelines Cohort (observations collected from 2007 until 2018) were used. Alcohol consumption during this period was estimated by means of cross-sectional pooled OLS models, in which alcohol consumption was regressed on the variable “month of the observation”, using the same categories as the independent variable “lockdown period”, for comparative purposes. Additionally, “year of observation” was accounted for in the models. Posterior margins predicted the estimated average alcohol consumption for each month, thus making results comparable with the ones from the COVID cohort.
