We’ve lost many lives due to drug overdose deaths since 1968
Jessica Rose, PhD:
“So yeah, there's this surge of deaths in millennials, which are 25 to 44-year-olds.
These are young people.
84% surplus of deaths in the fall of 2021, which is completely unexplained.
Nobody knows why.
According to what I've found, it's not due to drug overdoses and suicides and all of these other ways.”
“By 2021, 1 of every 22 deaths in the US was attributable to unintentional opioid toxicity.”
Findings In thiscross-sectional study of 422 605 unintentional deaths due to opioid toxicity, the years of life lost increased more than 3-fold, from 777 597 to 2 922 497, between 2011 and 2021. By 2021, 1 of every 22 deaths in the US was attributable to unintentional opioid toxicity.
The rate of drug overdose deaths increased among middle-aged and older adults from 2021 to 2022.
DEATHS OF DESPAIR (DRUG OVERDOSES) - LIFE EXPECTANCY WAS IN DECLINE BEFORE 2020 COVID PANDEMIC/HEALTH EMERGENCY WAS DECLARED - HOW DID DR. ROSE & DR. KORY MISS THIS VITAL INFORMATION?
If Progressive was warning us about drug overdose deaths and the falling life expectancy in December 2019 - why aren’t “truth warriors” and “leaders of the Medical Freedom Movement” Dr. Rose & Dr. Kory not discussing this crucial matter?
“This rise in mortality has, in turn, been largely a result of rising “deaths of despair”: drug overdoses…...the rise in these deaths has led to declining overall life expectancy for the past few years.”
As The New York Times’ Tom Edsall put it in a recent article, “red and blue voters live in different economies.”
What Edsall didn’t point out is that red and blue voters don’t just live differently, they also die differently.
The thing is, the red-blue divide isn’t just about money. It’s also, increasingly, a matter of life and death.
Back in the Bush years I used to encounter people who insisted that the United States had the world’s longest life expectancy. They hadn’t looked at the data, they just assumed that America was No. 1 on everything. Even then it wasn’t true: U.S. life expectancy has been below that of other advanced countries for a long time.
The death gap has, however, widened considerably in recent years as a result of increased mortality among working-age Americans. This rise in mortality has, in turn, been largely a result of rising “deaths of despair”: drug overdoses…...the rise in these deaths has led to declining overall life expectancy for the past few years.
A 2018 article in The Journal of the American Medical Association looked at changes in health and life expectancy in U.S. states between 1990 and 2016. The divergence among states is striking. And as I said, it’s closely correlated with political orientation.
In 2018, we had a tiny rise in life expectancy - it didn’t last:
Life expectancy is the most basic measure of the health of a society, and declines in developed countries are extremely unusual. But the United States experienced one from 2015 to 2017 as the opioid epidemic took its toll, worrying demographers who had not seen an outright decline since 1993, during the AIDS epidemic. An uptick in what have become known as “deaths of despair” — younger people dying from overdoses, suicide and alcoholism — has drawn considerable attention from politicians and policymakers.
The 2018 data, released in a report on Thursday, confirmed the first decline in drug deaths in 28 years, an important improvement after decades of rises.
The increase in life expectancy it helped produce was small — just over a month — and demographers cautioned that it was too early to tell if the country had turned the corner with opioid overdoses, which have claimed nearly 500,000 lives since the late 1990s. (January 30, 2020)
Deaths of despair
It’s hard to imagine a more alarming sign of a society’s well-being than an inability to keep its citizens alive. While some of the reasons are mysterious, others are fairly clear. American society has become far more unequal than it used to be, and the recent increases in mortality are concentrated among working-class Americans, especially those without a four-year college degree.
For many, daily life lacks the structure, status and meaning that it once had, as the Princeton University economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton have explained. Many people feel less of a connection to an employer, a labor union, a church or community groups. They are less likely to be married. They are more likely to endure chronic pain and to report being unhappy.
These trends have led to a surge of “deaths of despair” (a phrase that Case and Deaton coined), from drugs, alcohol and suicide. Other health problems, including diabetes and strokes, have also surged among the working class. Notably, the class gaps in life expectancy seem to be starker in the U.S. than in most other rich countries.
Covid, of course, has aggravated the country’s health inequalities. Working-class Americans were more likely to contract severe versions of Covid last year, for a mix of reasons. Many could not work from home. Others received lower-quality medical care after getting sick.
Since vaccines became widely available this year, working-class people have been less likely to get a shot. At first, vaccine access was playing a major role. Today, vaccine skepticism is the dominant explanation. (All of which suggests that Covid will continue to exacerbate health disparities beyond 2020; yesterday’s report on life expectancy did not include data for 2021.)
Race and sex
Covid has also caused sharp increases in racial inequality. As a Times article on the new report explains:
From 2019 to 2020, Hispanic people experienced the greatest drop in life expectancy — three years — and Black Americans saw a decrease of 2.9 years. White Americans experienced the smallest decline, of 1.2 years.
I exchanged emails with Case and Deaton yesterday, and they pointed out that racial patterns contain some nuances. Hispanic Americans live longer on average than non-Hispanic Americans, both Black and white — yet the impact of Covid was worst among Hispanics. “This is not simply a story of existing inequalities just getting worse,” Case and Deaton wrote.
The fact that many Hispanic people work in frontline jobs that exposed them to the virus surely plays a role. But Black workers also tend to hold these jobs. It’s unclear exactly why Covid has hit Hispanic communities somewhat harder than Black communities (and would be a worthy subject for academic research).
Covid has also killed more men than women, Case and Deaton pointed out, increasing the mortality gap between the sexes, after years in which it had mostly been shrinking. Life expectancy was 5.7 years longer for women last year, up from 5.1 years in 2019. The gap had fallen to a low of 4.8 years in the early 2010s.
The bottom line: Covid has both worsened and exposed a crisis in health inequality. But that crisis existed before Covid and will continue to exist when the pandemic is over.
7/22/2021
July 7, 2023
Trends in Opioid Toxicity–Related Deaths in the US Before and After the Start of the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2011-2021
“the absolute number of unintentional deaths due to opioid toxicity and the associated YLL (Years of Life Lost) among those younger than 40 years far exceeded those attributable to COVID-19 in both 2020 and 2021, indicating the distinct impact of drug toxicity–related deaths among younger individuals”
While YLL plateaued between 2017 (7.0 YLL per 1000) and 2019 (7.2 YLL per 1000), it (Years of Life Lost) increased by 62.9% between 2019 and 2021 coincident with the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching 11.7 YLL per 1000 population. This relative increase was similar across all age groups and sexes with the exception of those aged 15 to 19 years, in whom the YLL nearly tripled, from 1.5 to 3.9 YLL per 1000 population.
In 2021, 1 in 22 deaths in the US was attributable to unintentional opioid toxicity, resulting in nearly 3 million YLL. This burden was most pronounced among men aged 30 to 39 years but has been increasing, especially rapidly among those aged 15 to 19 years, with 1 in 10 deaths now opioid related. The overall burden increased considerably during the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing 63% between 2019 and 2021 despite stabilizing from 2017 to 2019.1
These findings highlight the enormous societal burden imparted by the overdose crisis in the US over the past decade, particularly among younger adults, a demographic cohort disproportionately impacted by substance-related harms.1,3,9 In addition, despite historically lower rates of opioid-related deaths among adolescents, this demographic cohort witnessed a more than doubling in death rates and YLL during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the absolute number of unintentional deaths due to opioid toxicity and the associated YLL among those younger than 40 years far exceeded those attributable to COVID-19 in both 2020 and 2021, indicating the distinct impact of drug toxicity–related deaths among younger individuals. This aligns with previous observations of accelerating substance-related harm among adolescents10and warrants further attention and expansion of harm reduction and treatment programs tailored to this demographic population.
It is important to place the findings of this study in context against other causes of death in the US. Specifically, these findings suggest that the YLL from unintentional opioid toxicity in 2020 (2 521 813 YLL) was comparable to the YLL from COVID-19 that same year (3 066 440 YLL) and amounted to 53% of the YLL attributable to COVID-19 in 2021 (2 922 497 YLL/5 512 380 YLL). Similarly, compared with estimates for other causes of death from the 2019 Global Burden of Disease study, the YLL attributable to opioid toxicity among those aged 15 to 74 years in the US (1 772 030 YLL in 2019) far exceeded those attributable to diabetes (1 115 879 YLL), road injuries (1 602 101 YLL), and stroke (1 442 702 YLL) in this population.11
It’s 2024, the American Medical Association issues an updated “Overdose Epidemic Report” - where are the “heroes” of the “medical freedom movement”? They’re jockeying for lucrative jobs in the upcoming Trump Administration.
The AMA has been reporting on the overdose epidemic for years, but Pierre Kory dismisses this issue. Why?
THE FLCCC ALLIANCE
What is killing people?
In a new op-ed in USA Today, Pierre Kory and Mary Beth Pfeiffer explore a mysterious spike in deaths that has been happening even as deaths from COVID-19 decreased.
Again, the American Medical Association Overdose Epidemic Report makes this issue a priority while two of the loudest voices of the “medical freedom movement” dismiss these deaths:
Drug overdose death rates rose during 2019–2020. The largest increases were among Black and American Indian/Alaska Native people, widening disparities.
Jessica Rose is kind of a big deal - she has the megaphone to make a difference in the battle to keep Americans from overdosing on drugs. She’s currently promoting herself to work for our CDC - the CDC, as noted above, discusses our drug overdose epidemic, but Jessica Rose dismisses it. She doesn’t belong at our CDC. She’s a definite NO in my book, we have enough foreign meddlers who want to live off US taxpayers.
She’s published medical reports with top American doctors:
But, like Pierre Kory, she has dismissed the epidemic of drug overdose deaths in the US. Why aren’t they helping to save lives by bringing attention to this epidemic while traveling the world - according to the UN, in 2018, it’s a global problem!
UN reports on drug abuse can be found here.
(Reminder: Pierre Kory was expert in George Floyd civil lawsuit against the police department. Yes, the same medical expert who allegedly denied that George Floyd died of a drug overdose is dismissing the epidemic of drug overdose deaths. Can’t ignore the race card….)
Doctors Kory and Rose can get in the weeds and discuss statistics by year/quarters and share what resources are available to victims of drug addiction and their families - or they can travel the world, pretending to be warriors while ignoring the epidemic we’ve been having in the US since before Covid19. Your call, Doctors Jessica Rose & Pierre Kory. Your call. We see you.
I’ve been working on this post for a very long time, have spent many hours watching videos of parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, friends of deceased Americans who have died from drug overdoses. These deceased humans matter and we must keep their memories alive. Please share your stories, let’s make this issue a priority for the new Administration - it’s up to us because the chosen “leaders” don’t care about the American victims of drug overdoses - they’ve made that very clear. Is it about money?
H/T to
- I stole some of his research on drug overdose deaths. Please visit Mark’s Opiod Epidemic Playlist on his website. Mark has the best database on the web on medical/science/misc leaders - alphabetized, easy to find information.Thank you for reading this post - let’s make 2025 the year that the selected “leaders” of the “freedom movement” prioritize the epidemic that preceded Covid19 - life expectancy decreasing due to drug overdose deaths. Let’s make some noise.
Some sources referenced and/or available for further research:
Drug Overdose Deaths: Facts and Figures / NIH / National Institute on Drug Abuse
Drug Overdose Deaths in the U.S. Up 30% in 2020
DRUG OVERDOSE DEATHS HAVE LIKELY SURPASSED 100,000 IN THE US
US Government Accountability Office / TREATMENT FOR DRUG MISUSE
United States drug overdose death rates and totals over time
Overdose Deaths Decline, Fentanyl Threat Looms
Updated Overdose Statistics 2024: Trends in Drug-Related Deaths
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