I’m cautiously optimistic that narcan moving to OTC might start to put a small dent in the accidental overdose deaths
Narcan won’t do much against fentanyl though.
Its just too strong.
I’m thinking some of that May 2020 spike was due to people isolating… and then some people “partaking” alone and thus not having backup when they ODed.
I am hoping OTC Narcan will help, but I’m not sure.
Here is the longer-term trend of drug OD death rates:
The fentanyl effect around 2014 or 2015 definitely made things worse. Maybe the huge increase over 2020 and 2021 was due to a number of things:
- government $$ getting siphoned into the few “entertainment” outlets [alcohol consumption also went way up, leading to more drunk driving for those who were still driving… also more alcohol-related deaths]
- people being more isolated, so they didn’t necessarily have anybody checking that they weren’t actually ODing… or they were doing drugs alone instead of with others, which they’d normally do
- lots of stressors, and well, people are reaching for the drugs. And the drug supply is more spiked with fentanyl in general
They are actually making fentanyl pills now (black market). From what I have read (China and Mexico).
Thats totally crazy (given how strong the drug is and how little is effective. Very easy to get the dosage wrong due to clumping)
Thats kind of why I think “this will get worse”.
It’s largely official now. Covid-19 is now no longer one of the leading causes of death in England and Wales, for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
It was the top cause of death in 2020 (responsible for 12.1% of all deaths) and 2021 (11.5%) but this dropped sharply in 2022 to 3.9% – putting it at sixth cause of death in England and Wales in 2022, with 65,976 deaths registered.
According to the ONS:
Sure, not surprising. My point was simply that it’s still having an impact and it’s not like we can compare 2022 or 2023 to 2019.
I think it will be a long time before the mortality rate falls to 2019 levels. And 2019 wasn’t a minimum in the US either, due largely to the opioid epidemic.
In the UK, we do not believe mortality will fall again to 2019 levels.
This is because the population has higher morbidity vs 2019, and we now have large-scale NHS strikes affecting patient access.
From the data I have seen so far (2023), we are running at about c10% over 2019 (in terms of total excess deaths).
Today’s video:
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Ooops, I’ve been doing a bunch of videos, but I’ll come back to that in a bit.
I was on the BB Radio 4 podcast: More or Less –
for graphs, links, etc:
Certainly influenced by the pandemic, but not directly from the covid:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/death-rate-children-teens-guns-drugs-54c604f4?mod=hp_lead_pos1
related posts (and twitter thread):
the large increase is coming from teens, not little kids.
https://twitter.com/meepbobeep/status/1658781614166401024
It’s homicides, drug ODs, and motor vehicle accidents.
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More interesting than the rise (IMO) is the drop from 2006 (about the same as now) to 2019. What happened then to make kids not die? Mainly MV accidents, it seems (the graph makes it difficult to discern), then homicides, and Drug OD’s (all changing at different times during the period).
Strangely, suicides increased during the period.
Yeah, suicide has been a bad trend.
Taking my spreadsheet, here is a line graph version:
Yes, motor vehicle accident death trend going down has been excellent. That’s awesome.
I glanced through the article. When it comes to marital status, I’m curious how they classified couples who are living together but not married.
…However the Census categorizes them?
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In today’s “Mortality Nuggets: “Young People”, Actuarial Club Meeting, and Disparate Results Pre-Pandemic” email you included this table:
I’m trying to figure out what “Calendar year regime” is and how it affects mortality. After a cursory look at https://www.soa.org/4a8ccd/globalassets/assets/files/resources/research-report/2022/mortality-improvement-trends.pdf I am still dumbfounded.
Spanish flu?
No offense to any Spaniards.
