Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic • Hacker News Board

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#121

Post by monocasa » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 12:56 AM UTC

1996 wrote: post #76

victorhooi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear these sorts of sentiments from the USA a lot - where apparently people are actively rioting and protesting against the health lockdown. I'm from Australia - where while we've had some grumblings about the health measures, on the whole, we've been pretty lucky. Our death toll is 104 people - which even though (comparative) low is still a tragedy. Yet the USA death toll is over 130,000 people - that is a terribl…

> To be frank - that seems very selfish. No, it seems logical: if the elderly are at risk, by all means, let them shelter at home and give them money without destroying the economy (as the elderly as less likely to be employed). Even better, for old people who need to work, give them full pay every week, and just ask them in return to stay at home and use uber eats. But we didn't do that. Too bad: it would still have…

My 38 yo healthy coworker died from it. It's not just the elderly at risk.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#122

Post by monocasa » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 1:01 AM UTC

xienze wrote: post #108

victorhooi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear these sorts of sentiments from the USA a lot - where apparently people are actively rioting and protesting against the health lockdown. I'm from Australia - where while we've had some grumblings about the health measures, on the whole, we've been pretty lucky. Our death toll is 104 people - which even though (comparative) low is still a tragedy. Yet the USA death toll is over 130,000 people - that is a terribl…

> Yet the USA death toll is over 130,000 people - that is a terrible thing =(. I do not get how the USA can be so blase about it. Because on a per capita basis the US actually has fewer deaths per million than multiple European countries? Ask yourself how e.g. Belgians can be so blasé about this, they’re doing worse than us in this regard! Or maybe it’s because deaths have dropped dramatically from their peak and con…

> 130K Covid deaths is like 3 or 4 years worth of flu deaths, which no one really cares about?

That's one way to put it. Another is it's already more American deaths than total in WWI in just a handful of months and we're not over the biggest hump yet.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#123

Post by monocasa » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 1:05 AM UTC

makomk wrote: post #101

victorhooi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear these sorts of sentiments from the USA a lot - where apparently people are actively rioting and protesting against the health lockdown. I'm from Australia - where while we've had some grumblings about the health measures, on the whole, we've been pretty lucky. Our death toll is 104 people - which even though (comparative) low is still a tragedy. Yet the USA death toll is over 130,000 people - that is a terribl…

Australia is still much earlier on in its pandemic than the US and other countries. Wait until the lockdowns are national, and going on for months, with no prospect of any way out in sight.

They aren't much earlier; they got cases almost the same time as the US. They're just handling it way better. And it's not like Australia is a particularly well run country.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#124

Post by monocasa » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 1:12 AM UTC

flattone wrote: post #93

perardi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of not-that-illegal-but-still-illegal drugs that are manufactured in bulk in China and India are still coming in just fine. Source: my sources.

Whats the confrontational tone for?

I didn't read that as confrontational, just a frank statement on a topic that lends itself to being discussed in vague terms.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#125

Post by gdulli » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

TheGrim-888 wrote: post #58

mnm1 wrote: post #31

People are desperate. This is to be expected. Along with unemployment, loneliness, hopelessness, helplessness, stress, fear, and anxiety have all risen greatly. This is how people cope when they are not in control of their lives and especially when they don't see a path to regain that control. I would expect more of this. Drug overdoses were already a huge issue because of societal issues. Now, they will be even more…

I'm not sure I agree with the statement that the US has the "worst virus situation". It has some of the most cases, sure, if you compare it by population though, it's still high, but it's not horrible. The US is #12 for cases per capita, most European countries are between 4,000-6,000 cases per capita, while the US is at 8,500, which is definitely more. But fewer people die per capita than in the UK, France, Spain, S…

> if you compare it by population though, it's still high, but it's not horrible.

> But fewer people die per capita than in the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Italy, and some other minor countries.

You listed the countries with more deaths per capita. Excluding countries with That means every other country in the world has fewer deaths per capita. The US is the 7th worst out of 66 countries. You can say that you're satisfied with that standing, but you can't say we're doing well.

Disappointment with that metric may greatly overlap with partisan disappointment in the current administration. But Occam's razor suggests the former does not require the latter.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#126

Post by mattigames » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 1:21 AM UTC

dkdk8283 wrote: post #112

mattigames wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The delay on the response in America is the real cause of the current situation including the despair involved, countries such as Japan or New Zealand that quickly took effective measures such as make everyone use face mask[0] or early closing of airports are pretty much back to normal already; America didn't close early, and more troublesome some people took being mask-less a political matter, others believe a consp…

We did delay but we have to double down: let things run it’s course. Reversing now and keeping things closed will have far worse devastation in the long run

Any significant research that supports such claim that I can read?

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#127

Post by gdulli » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 1:24 AM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #117

delecti wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data shows that it hasn't in fact been making things worse. The protestors are largely all wearing masks, and that makes a pretty enormous difference.

Which data are you referring to? Last I heard, there wasn't really data available, since contact tracers aren't asking people whether they went to the protests.

Cases in New York and Boston aren't spiking. States that rushed to reopen bars are the ones that are.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#128

Post by qntty » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 1:28 AM UTC

eezurr wrote: post #71

If anyone here is "losing it" from your routine being destroyed and your city being shut down, I highly, highly recommend you take a week (preferably 2) off and do as much outdoor activity as possible. You should not return home during this period. This will reset your brain because it will break your new covid19 routine with new activities and new location. When you come back, use this new state of mind to change yo…

Have you done this? Where did you go?

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#129

Post by qntty » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 1:35 AM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #18

Back when this started I made the claim that the long term consequences of lock down would exceed the short term benefits . Depression, Drugs overdose, murder (despair), Suicide, extra sedentary issues leading to diabetese/CVD, loss of jobs/meaning et al. I havent seen anyone do the math of the uptick there to talk about the marginal benefit of lockdown or the fact that this, once again, is a form of biased benefit f…

There are two problems with this. The first is that it's impossible to know what the consequences of a lockdown are, because in all likelihood, many people would be staying home and losing jobs without a "lockdown" because people would still be afraid to go anywhere.

The second problem is that the consequences that we're seeing in the USA aren't exactly the "consequences of a lockdown", they're the consequences of a half-ass lockdown that didn't decrease the numbers like they did in other countries. Both because of non-compliance of people and state/local government, and because of a broken healthcare system. You can't really blame that on the lockdown.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#130

Post by coco1729 » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 1:37 AM UTC

In terms of healthy life-years lost, stay-at-home orders could be much, much worse than complete freedom.

Depression causes more lost life years than cancer, AIDs, and war combined (without even accounting for how depression can cause things like alcoholism and heart disease) (source: The Noonday Demon). So it's not unreasonable to guess that the increased anxiety and depression from quarantining could be much more detrimental in terms of years lost in aggregate.

For a personal anecdote, my grandfather who was in a nursing home died during the pandemic. It wasn't from covid-19 but I certainly think the quarantine accelerated his death (and prevented any family members from seeing him in his last days even after trying desperately).

I know it's easy for someone young like me to say this, not being in much personal danger from exposure. But I do think we need to really look at indirect damages of quarantining. We may find that the American left has had the morals of this situation all wrong.