Key quotes for me: > Dr. Woolf said one of the findings showed that the excess deaths were highly concentrated geographically, with fully a third of them in ju

Key quotes for me: > Dr. Woolf said one of the findings showed that the excess deaths were highly concentrated geographically, with fully a third of them in just four states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Indiana. > “What’s not lost on us is what is going on in those states,” he said. “The history of when this health trend started happens to coincide with when these economic shifts began — the loss of manufacturing jobs and closure of steel mills and auto plants.” > The increased deaths from drug overdoses reflected increased rates of addiction to opioids. But they have also risen because of changes in the drug supply in the East and Midwest. Over the last decade, the synthetic drug known as fentanyl has been mixed into heroin — or in some places has replaced it. That has made the drug supply more deadly, since it is difficult for users to know the dose they are taking. > Life expectancy in the coastal metro areas — both east and west — has improved at roughly the same rate as in Canada. These together point to me to local crises: people in hard times due to economic shifts turning to drugs, etc, as an outlet. There are many ways to improve the lot of these people, but being blind to the cause does not help them. Also let’s be clear about the scale of the problem: > While the total number of excess deaths — meaning the number of deaths that would not have happened if the mortality rate had continued to improve — is small, at 33,000 For context, total overdose deaths are ~70,000/year. https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/index.html