Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

http://www.vch.ca/public-health/harm-reduction/overdose-prev...

There's not a whole lotta point, since everything has Fentanyl in it these days, except pot (probably)

And free Naloxone (Narcan) kits at Shopper's Drug Mart, London Drugs, and other places:

https://towardtheheart.com/site-finder

They only ask your age and whether this is your first kit. No ID required

There were 131 overdose calls in Vancouver yesterday

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 terrible thing =(. I do not get how the USA can be so blase about it.

And that is with measures in place (although I'm sure there are breaches). Imagine if you simply let it run rampant, and let the health system get overhwelmed? (See Italy).

It does seem like its overwhelming the young who are very laid back about COVID-19, and chaff the most at restrictions.

To be frank - that seems very selfish.

Imagine if the virus had a 30% mortality rate in your cohort? You'd be terrified.

(I'm young, with two young kids under 5. My parents refused to see me or our kids for a couple of months, out of fear they might catch it from us - I missed them as did their grandkids, but I understand why - it must have been scary for them).

And even that aside - have you considered that a lot of the economic downturn isn't from the actual health measures in place - but from the uncertainty, doubt and fear caused by a virus pandemic? People are scared, and that's naturally going to curb some spending. We are a interlinked global economy, and you cannot escape that.

I hope that we'll have a vaccine soon, so we can go back to normal - but in lieu of that, trying to stamp out the virus or contain it isn't a bad goal.

This is why government are engaging in stimulus spending, or increasing their social support programs.

This is why they exist.

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, Sweden, Italy, and some other minor countries.

It isn't like the US has orders of magnitude more infections per capita, and there's more people dying per capita in many other major countries. In such countries you'd have about the same chance of catching the virus, and a greater change of dying, as in the US.

The majority of people that are refusing to wear masks are doing so because they believe the science/data supports that decision. You might disagree with that, and whether the science/data actually supports it is a different discussion, but they aren't just being "childish" and refusing to follow recommendations for no reason.

I think there's obviously political power to gain in making the situation look as bad as possible, so that a group can then use that as a foothold to advance their own political policies. It's unfortunate that the issue is so political already. But you can easily tell when it's happening when people are referring to "society failing" and needing to "reshape society" and saying how horrible it is in the US when it really isn't that bad, etc. You can't advance new politics without a narrative of the old way of things being bad.

I guess you can easily argue that there's political power for me to downplay the situation and make it look as good as possible, in order to prevent new politics from advancing. And that's true. But it's good to at least share both sides of the story.