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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

#381
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Working from home can remove a lot of the accountability that keeps addicts in check. This is a cruel twist, given that suicide deaths actually decreased in 2020[1], probably for the reason you've mentioned: spending nearly all of your time with others makes you accountable and removes opportunities for self-harm. [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR016.pdf

spending nearly all of your time with others makes you accountable and removes opportunities for self-harm. Never would have seen it coming that encouraging people to stay isolated for years at a time and actively fearing their own proximity to one another would be detrimental.

Well economic anxiety you see…

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

#382

With few exceptions, if you want to know what's really going on, the insurance companies are the numbers to draw from. They have a vested interest in knowing what's happening and people usually have a vested interest in reporting to them to collect resources. (The exception is when there are secondary effects. Auto insurance reporting under samples minor accidents, because people don't want to risk their perfect driv…

Note that life insurance isn't going to be a good model--there are two selection biases at work here. 1) Those in ill health likely can't afford life insurance. 2) Life insurance is mostly to provide for dependents--which means people in good enough shape to have dependents and people are young enough to still have dependents. (Once the kids are grown there's much less reason for term life insurance.)

Good point. You've highlighted two ways in which these numbers might under count COVID fatalities based on what we know about correlation with both age and prior health conditions and morbidity with this disease.

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

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m so sorry. My father-in-law has had his “elective” surgery to deal with a hernia cancelled twice due to hospital overcapacity, and all we can do is pray that Germany’s current restrictions will have kept the numbers low enough for his current appointment this week and likely follow up procedure to deal with tachycardia to happen. They’re not even talking about rescheduling the hernia surgery anytime soon - he’s ma…

I don’t disagree but I think we should also be demanding more capacity from our hospitals and maybe just maybe demanding actual universal healthcare. It’s so bizarre to me that that’s not even on the table but it’s because most just assume we have to have a for-profit medical system.

Increasing capacity for hospitals is actually a hard problem, because the time it takes to train people to fill the capacity is quite high.

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

#384
post #372
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not a complete list for any year, so comparisons of counts is meaningless - again, lots of room for biases to creep in here.

>comparisons of counts is meaningless Even if the data is biased, it's still useful when you account for the biases. What are you proposing is the bias for 2021?

A potential bias for 2021 would be that: In 2021 some people are worried about a vaccine->heart link and for any given event may be more likely to document it online and/or add it to Wikipedia. As such we might not be measuring number of cardiac arrests, and actually may be measuring public attention paid to cardiac arrest.

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

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The synthetic and highly addictive drug" Funny use of the word 'synthetic' to add extra spookiness. Something like 60% of first-world medicines are natural origin or secondary metabolites of natural origin - the other 40% are all synthetic. [1] [1] https://www.spandidos-publications.com/10.3892/br.2017.909

I wondered this myself, since they usually spell out "synthetic opioid" when referring to fentanyl and its ilk, ostensibly to compare it against naturally derived opioids. I have no idea how many in use today are naturally derived; maybe "synthetic" was always a scare term on that context?

"Synthetic opioid" is used to describe an opioid not derived from the morphine in the opium poppy (or the codeine in the dried poppy)

I am not a doctor: Of the very powerful "powder" drugs heroin is the safest as it has very little effect on the involuntary respiratory system which is the route that opiates take to kill. "Nodding off" on synthetic opiates leads commonly to death (which is why you always prod a sleeping junky - wake up!!) but not so much on heroin.

But it is much safer to smoke opium, if you wish to have such a habit. Much less chance of death and disease.

So, you cruel, nay, sadistic lawmakers: Legalise opium!

But people popping pills are nearly invisible and die quietly - people smoking opium fill up establishments, make funny smells and do not conveniently die off in the corner.....

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

#386
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaccine does not prevent anyone from getting or spreading covid. In Ontario same case rate of covid per 100k residents, in unxxed as vaxxed and heading higher. 3rd graph. https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data?fbclid=IwAR2pRUq9GN9EEoDTm0...

"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.

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

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct! “ The synthetic and highly addictive drug has claimed more lives than COVID-19, auto crashes, gun violence, cancer and suicide in the year 2020.” https://www.abc12.com/news/fentanyl-number-one-cause-of-deat...

> "The synthetic and highly addictive drug" Funny use of the word 'synthetic' to add extra spookiness. Something like 60% of first-world medicines are natural origin or secondary metabolites of natural origin - the other 40% are all synthetic. [1] [1] https://www.spandidos-publications.com/10.3892/br.2017.909

Here it's reasonable to differentiate between natural opioids, semi-synthetic opioids, and fully synthetic opioids. It's not a perfect measure, but the degree of potency tends to vary with the category and the fully synthetic opioids do not rely upon poppies for precursors.

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

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The synthetic and highly addictive drug" Funny use of the word 'synthetic' to add extra spookiness. Something like 60% of first-world medicines are natural origin or secondary metabolites of natural origin - the other 40% are all synthetic. [1] [1] https://www.spandidos-publications.com/10.3892/br.2017.909

I wondered this myself, since they usually spell out "synthetic opioid" when referring to fentanyl and its ilk, ostensibly to compare it against naturally derived opioids. I have no idea how many in use today are naturally derived; maybe "synthetic" was always a scare term on that context?

Note that semi-synthetic is a category too that "synthetic opioid" generally excludes.

Natural opioids: codeine, morphine.

Semi-synthetic opioids: heroin, hydromorphone, hydrocodone, oxycodone, etc.

Synthetic opioids: methadone (though this is usually excluded from the reporting of "synthetic opioid overdose deaths" for various reasons), demerol, fentanyl, lots of -fentanyl analogs, etc.

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

#390

I run the same trail for over 10 years. In the last year, I had to call 911 for a guy with chest pains and twice for suicidal women waiting on the train tracks for the train. Never happened before. I'm a little scared we may be entering a period of mass psychosis which is more deadly than any virus. The psychological conditions that lead people to burn witches and the rise of dictatorships are here. If I was richer I…

Definitely a period of mass misery

I see it also in the school vandalism, increase in shooting deaths and general uncertainty about rule of law

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