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Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#131

Post by coco1729 »

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

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. Also, I do think we were rational to lock down early on when we didn't know much about the virus. But I do think we need to really attempt to quantify the indirect damages of quarantining vs not at this point. We may find that the morals of the American left don't match the reality.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#132

Post by nmfisher »

monocasa wrote: post #122
xienze wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

True, but 'number of deaths' is a very blunt statistic because not all deaths are equal.

The death of a young male in his prime is not the same as the death of an elderly person whose 3 year survival rate was already less than 25% (made-up numbers for the sake of illustration, not accurate).

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#133

Post by dwaltrip »

mythrwy wrote: post #109
ansible wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a nationwide disaster that people are simply not ready to deal with. Many people here have no idea what suffering is and therefore, they don't know how to suffer or how to get through such times. Suffering is externalized onto minorities and other unwanted people in society so that the well off don't have to deal with it. Now everyone's suffering and many simply can't cope with the suffering or with the additi…

It's possible the history books in 50 years will say a bunch of kids with unarticulated and poorly thought out grievances tried to burn down the country after being cooped up for 3 months and ingesting too much propaganda from Reddit and the public school system resulting in the re-election of Donald Trump. One never knows when one sets out to be a hero what the end result will be.

Well, that is certainly one way to express support for the further entrenchment of racial inequities we find in our society today.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#134

Post by ryandrake »

qntty wrote: post #129
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…

We should really stop even calling it a “lockdown.” What an exaggeration! Nobody’s locked into their homes. States issued these half-assed “Stay At Home orders” which were largely ignored. They might as well have been called Stay At Home suggestions. Around me, you couldn’t even tell there was a worldwide deadly pandemic: everyone is out horsing around and stores and restaurants are packed—no masks. The USA never had a lockdown which is why this is turning into a sustained disaster.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#135

Post by xbmcuser »

gdulli wrote: post #125
TheGrim-888 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 satis…

Another thing is most of those countries the virus has stopped spreading or is slowing down in the US it is accelerating with the last 3 days each being record for new cases

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#136

Post by Beefin »

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…

yep! go wilderness camping. resets everything! circadian rhythm, routine, mental fog, etc. and added benefit of understanding how insignificant you are in the world :) optimistic nihilism.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#138

Post by maerF0x0 »

monocasa wrote: post #122
xienze wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's worth noting in your comparison that the US Population was less than 1/3 it is now, and most were young productive men just beginning their lives. Covid is more than elderly people who have had long lives (relative to historical numbers).

So relatively speaking WW1 was much more devastating.

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#139

Post by kyleee »

monocasa wrote: post #121
1996 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Any comorbidities?

Re: Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

#140

Post by nradov »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #111
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…

The concern in the US is that attempts to stamp it out will fail. I hope for your sake that we're wrong, stamping it out just works, and Australia and New Zealand can survive virus free for the next year or so. But when I hear about another month of strict lockdowns in Melbourne, I get pretty worried.

The US isn't taking any of the steps that would be necessary to stamp it out, so of course we will fail. That's a forgone conclusion unless there are major policy changes.
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