These numbers do not add up with CDC statistics, which show that about 7000 people in that age group died from COVID over the whole year. One mistake I see is

These numbers do not add up with CDC statistics, which show that about 7000 people in that age group died from COVID over the whole year. One mistake I see is to take the average of twenty years of deaths in that age group as baseline. The number of deaths from drug overdoses has steadily risen from 20,000 per year in 2000 to over 80,000 last year - with a sharp spike at the beginning of this year. Edit: The paper that is cited in the introduction acknowledges that an increase opiate overdoses may be the underlying factor here. They only had data from 2018 to estimate its impact.