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Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

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Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the non-COVID deaths I’ve heard of among younger people ( Working from home can remove a lot of the accountability that keeps addicts in check. When your coworkers can’t see you, it’s much easier to be inebriated or otherwise suffering from addiction-related issues without feeling social pressure to correct it.

> Working from home can remove a lot of the accountability that keeps addicts in check. Not only that but the lockdowns making people low-key depressed which would also be a reason for using addictive substances since they often go hand-in-hand together. I could be pretty much classified an alcoholic during most of 2019-2020 because a six-pack a day keeps the boredom away.

That’s… a substantial way past “pretty much”.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within my brothers circle of friends / former friends etc, amongst those that participate in recreational drug use, there have been a crazy number of Fentanyl related deaths. They're all between the ages of 25 - 30. I can't help but wonder how much this has an impact.

All of the non-COVID deaths I’ve heard of among younger people ( Working from home can remove a lot of the accountability that keeps addicts in check. When your coworkers can’t see you, it’s much easier to be inebriated or otherwise suffering from addiction-related issues without feeling social pressure to correct it.

Coincidentally all the natural cause deaths in my circle were “natural” diseases like cancer and COVID-19. I’m in my 30s now, and no longer really hang out with (non-functional) drug addicts anymore though. YMMV.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#403
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The anti-vaccination people don’t need facts" but pro-vaccination people will downvote the official data. Edit: ...as the parent comment was downvoted when I wrote this

The page also shows that vaccinated people are far less likely to be in the ICU, which is an even more important metric.

This is the only metric still left, which ma be just time delayed.

Also people in ICU with covid may not be the same thing as people in ICU because of covid. It may likely just be that very sick people in hospitals are refusing the vaccine and catching it. Hospitals are confined spaces that aid in transmission of all kinds of diseases.

The difference is 40 people out of a population of 14.5 million. So small it could literally be people with terminal diseases catching covid on their death beds.

To use this to advocate for any preventative effect in a healthy individual in the general population would be misleading. Very likely the difference is just sampling bias.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#404
post #397
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The increase in deaths is being driven by lockdown/social isolation so it looks more like medical triage. This is an argument many make, but it's not a really good argument. - Fentanyl deaths were trending up before 2020. - The degree to which fentanyl is lacing other street drugs is unprecedented and seemingly independent of lockdown. - Look, we don't really have "lockdown" anymore.

>- Fentanyl deaths were trending up before 2020. They were trending up but there was a very sharp increase once the epidemic started. >- The degree to which fentanyl is lacing other street drugs is unprecedented and seemingly independent of lockdown. There was precedent before 2019. Seemingly independent growth that's also parabolic during 2020? Unlikely >- Look, we don't really have "lockdown" anymore. The genie is…

> They were trending up but there was a very sharp increase once the epidemic started.

Opioid deaths increased 1014% from 2013 to 2019. This is an average compound growth rate of 46.8% per year over that span.

Opioid deaths increased by about 50% from 2019 to 2020.

It looks like they increased by less than 40% from 2020 to 2021. So over the past 2 years we have had the same increase rate as from the entire span.

The data don't support your assertions.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#405
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm fully aware that variance and standard deviation apply to any sample or population, and that sigma is normally used for standard deviation. However, in everyday usage, saying something is a "2 or 3 sigma" event nearly always refers to a normal distribution unless otherwise noted, because otherwise that information doesn't really tell you anything. Is only with a specific distribution that can imply a percent…

The point is that you expect a normal distribution without fat tails. Fat tails are a sign of non random processes. Which lets you know some non random process is happening.

As the sibling comment wrote, it's not non-random processes in this instance, it's processes that aren't independent.

That is, when generally looking over any death rates in a relatively large population, most deaths in a given year are uncorrelated, so things look like a normal distribution. Obviously with a transmissible virus, the fact that two people died in the same year of Covid is correlated.

Similarly, if you did the math from the insurance company's data, I'd bet you'd find the chance of everybody dying in the same year would be like 1 in many, many trillions of years. But of course things like supervolcanos or meteor strikes are possible. Those aren't non-random, it's just that everyone's death would correlate with that single event.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within my brothers circle of friends / former friends etc, amongst those that participate in recreational drug use, there have been a crazy number of Fentanyl related deaths. They're all between the ages of 25 - 30. I can't help but wonder how much this has an impact.

All of the non-COVID deaths I’ve heard of among younger people ( Working from home can remove a lot of the accountability that keeps addicts in check. When your coworkers can’t see you, it’s much easier to be inebriated or otherwise suffering from addiction-related issues without feeling social pressure to correct it.

This is one of the problem with all the people focusing on "excess deaths" as a metric for COVID Deaths.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#407
Well, I'm sure there is a little bit of significance, but you have to take into account that it's a relatively small number of deaths compared to the population size, and the person giving you the news about "DEATHs ARE UP" sells LIFE INSURANCE.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#408
post #379

My hypothesis is that this is caused from diabetes. I first learned about this when my friend was diagnosed with diabetes at the beginning of the pandemic. He said that Stanford was investigating a potential connection. Now there is a bit more literature [1]. If you go to [2] and select "Weekly Number of Deaths by Cause Subgroup" and then "Other select causes" from the dropdown, you will see that diabetes jumped up a…

Interestingly enough, over 40% of all COVID deaths are diabetics. - https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/diabetics-make-up-40-of-covid-...

Well, that makes a lot of sense since covid is particularly lethal among those that are immuno-compromised.

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#409

Life Expectancy in U.S. Declined 1.8 Years in 2020, CDC Says https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/life-expectancy-in-u-s-decl... This is for 2020 - COVID-19 deaths are more for 2021. Really wild numbers if you think about it.

It also hints that covid-19 related deaths are undercounted in the us.

The NY Times used to do a breakdown, and found yes they are: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/14/us/covid-19-d...

Re: Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US has had both a drug-addiction epidemic, a diabetes epidemic and an obesity epidemic. Each these conditions doesn't just reduce lifespan. They also put people in a more fragile life-situation where they need more support. And the US hasn't been at maintaining those kinds of support during the epidemic. Edit: The US life expectancy decline relative to other advanced nations is relevant. Take a look at the following…

And makes people more vulnerable when they contract other diseases. COVID hits harder if you are diabetic and/or obese, for example. The people who try to promote body positivity are doing a disservice to the overweight. You cannot be healthy and fat, and we should not pretend otherwise to spare hurt feelings.

Body Positivity movement started out with a good goal, but went off the rails with the obesity == healthy BS.

However if you want to solve obesity, especially the morbid obesity shamming will never resolve that as chances are the obesity is cased by an underlying metal or medical issue. most often an anxiety disorder of some kind, and socially shaming someone that suffers from anxiety is not going to cure them, and in fact will most likely make their eating disorder worse.

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