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Is this per 100,000 deaths? In that case, wouldn't lower rates of traffic accidents and lung cancer contribute to higher relative deaths of drug-related deaths?
by mFixman 8y ago
Is this per 100,000 deaths? In that case, wouldn't lower rates of traffic accidents and lung cancer contribute to higher relative deaths of drug-related deaths?
- mr_luc 8y agoThis is an excellent question, but my first impression is that they aren't doing anything sneaky. I see that some of the data is labeled "per 100,000 individuals," not deaths. Obviously, there is a specific policy push and point of view outlined in the paper, which is probably why most such papers are published. But a lot of this data is from the CDC and should be independently verifiable and from Appendix B of the paper, I see that the ultimate source is something called "CDC Wonder". https://wonder.cdc.gov/ https://wonder.cdc.gov/ And it looks like one can make a request for that data: https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D77 https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D77
- Bartweiss 8y agoIt's "crude rate per 100,000", which is the number of people in a sample of 100,000 who would die of that cause in a given year. It's basically a death rate multiplied by 100,000 to be more readable. If you check the CDC WONDER stats, the total annual death rate is ~840/100,000. I suppose there is some replacement effect in here, where if fewer people die in car crashes they're more likely to live long enough to die of Alzheimers. That's part of why the death rate has been climbing; the population is aging overall. To handle that, there are also "age-adjusted" death rates available, which standardize years of life lost. That can be a big difference; for instance the UK suicide rate is much lower than the US one, but also skews much younger so the age-adjusted rates are closer.