If a tiny sip of beer every couple of days had such marked benefits and few downsides, I feel like it would be legitimately considered as at least an option.
I feel like at this point it's pretty well established that having a few glasses of wine a week was actually associated with being upper class, which was why those studies correlated it with better health outcomes.
It's also a problem that not drinking at all is a leading indicator that you are already sick (i.e. you stop drinking because you can't tolerate it, but you can't tolerate it because something is wrong which is not yet diagnosed but will be in a later assessment).
