7 ms·

Canada, April: Under-65 excess mortality exceeds under-65 Covid-19 deaths

121 points by angelzen 5y ago

angelzen 5y ago
> Based on the newly updated provisional dataset released today from the Canadian Vital Statistics Death Database, from the end of March 2020 to the beginning of April 2021, an estimated 62,203 deaths were reported among Canadians aged 0 to 64. This represents 5,535 more deaths than expected were there no pandemic, after accounting for changes in the population such as aging. Over the same period, 1,380 COVID-19 deaths have been attributed to the same age group (those younger than 65), suggesting that the excess mortality is, in large part, related to other factors such as increases in the number deaths attributed to causes associated with substance use and misuse, including unintentional (accidental) poisonings and diseases and conditions related to alcohol consumption.
- codeecan 5y ago
  The summary is the lock downs resulted in +4,155 excess deaths under 65 for 2020? Thats pretty damning for the government and a confirmation of what anti-lock down protesters have been saying since last year. If they let under 65s free while sheltering the vulnerable and keeping mask and distance protocol would there be 4x the covid deaths, probably not. And we could have avoided the ~$400+ billion dollar deficit.
  - chrisfosterelli 5y ago
    It's not immediately obvious that the excess deaths are lockdown related deaths. There's also a growing overdose epidemic among that age group, for example.
    - codeecan 5y ago
      It's well supported that the combination of lock down isolation[1] in addition to the free CERB money resulted in the spike of drug abuse / suicide deaths[2]. [1] https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-coronavirus-is-killing-thousands-so-is-the-lockdown/ https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-coronavirus-is-killing-thousa... [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-pandemic-opioid-addiction-overdose-1.5606188 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-pandemic-opioid-addict... ... And I don't believe we have even begun to see the psychological / developmental effects of isolation and distance learning on young kids.
      - nomdep 5y ago
        But we can see the impact of those who has become orphans because of COVID. I prefer your armchair problems any day
        atomicUpdate 5y ago
        The results of the study are that more orphans were created by the lockdowns than covid.
        nomdep 5y ago
        The study doesn’t say those who die because of their addiction during lockdown were parents.
      - DanBC 5y ago
        No, it's absolutely not well supported that deaths by suicide have increased. I mean, from your own link: > We don’t have data that the lockdowns are causing more suicides,
    - dcolkitt 5y ago
      I would guess that people who are socially isolated and unemployed are more likely to engage in drug abuse.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      I believe that increasing trend in overdose deaths was accounted for in the excess mortality calculation used in the article.
  - driverdan 5y ago
    That's not what it says at all. This is preliminary and no conclusions have been made. It could be that 4155 COVID deaths were not properly tested and incorrectly categorized.
    - sct202 5y ago
      Yeah, restrictions in Canada varied by region and shifted on and off, so it would take a lot more analysis to say one way or the other.
    - MatteoFrigo 5y ago
      I disagree. The paper goes into some details explaining how many deaths are due to alcohol abuse vs. poisoning etc. They also have a list of conditions that they associate with the various causes of death. For example, if somebody dies of alcoholic gastritis, they classify the death as alcohol-related. Now, like all estimates, I am sure there are errors, but it's not like they haven't done their homework. There isn't enough data in the paper to blame the lockdown per se, however. E.g., it could be that the media fear-mongering is driving people crazy more than usual. There is no way to tell.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - nickthemagicman 5y ago
      There could actually be way less covid deaths due to improper testing. I'm glad people are finally admitting that there could be problems with covid testing.
Tiktaalik 5y ago
> Mortality patterns from unintentional poisoning have been of particular interest, as there is evidence in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia that substance use has increased in 2020 compared with previous years, while availability and access to harm reduction programs, supervised consumption services, and in-person support services for substance use may have been disrupted during the pandemic. Deaths from accidental poisoning can include different circumstances such as individuals using substances recreationally along with those who mistakenly ingest too much prescription or over-the-counter medications. Kind of understating things here. There's a toxic drug crisis in this country and it has killed thousands upon thousands in recent years. This was happening well before the pandemic. Literally 5 people every day in British Columbia are dying due to overdoses, directly related from the fact that the drugs are poisoned, not what they appear, and it has become impossible to ascertain a correct dosage. This should be an election issue (Canada is having an election issue atm) but sadly it won't be. BC's health officer, who everyone has listened to during this pandemic, has begged the Federal government (the Province and City of Vancouver also begging) to decriminalize drugs to help with this issue, but the Feds have done nothing.
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  At this point I don't believe real change will happen until the majority of voters are somehow personally affected by this epidemic of overdoses. Canadian society has a very strong puritanical undercurrent to it that is rarely acknowledged. I've heard in casual conversation people say that addicts overdosing is a "problem that solves itself". Until these peoples' views are changed, the suffering will continue.
  - john_moscow 5y ago
    I think, the problem is deeper. People turn towards drugs when something else in their life is terribly broken and they see no way of fixing it. And I suspect that the ongoing erosion of the middle class has something to do with it. I think the current popular viewpoint that we should just be ok with a growing fraction of the population effectively committing a gradual mental suicide, welcome it and make it easier, is totally wrong.
pessimizer 5y ago
Correction: Under-65 excess mortality exceeds under-65 Covid-19 deaths.
- OJFord 5y ago
  That resolves an ambiguity; it's not particularly charitable to call it a 'correction' though, IMO. Also, I know it's not standard, but this almost wants a '(July)' (or even April?) in the title. Not to mention that it's not the original title.. but then, much like a tweet, the submitter's just trying to call out the relevant/intended part of a much broader page.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    Fair. Luckily there is an edit button :)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
bopbeepboop 5y ago
Extended lockdowns were always QALY negative for populations under 60. The destruction from this panic will manifest over decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year
- hilbertseries 5y ago
  You’re comparing mortality rates with lockdowns and determining that we’d be better off without lockdowns. But your benchmark then needs to be covid19 mortality without lockdowns and with potential healthcare collapse.
  - hourislate 5y ago
    >potential healthcare collapse Hate to break the news to you but the Canadian healthcare system collapsed a long time before Corona. Just ask anyone who has been to a hospital in Toronto before Corona.
    - oblio 5y ago
      Doesn't Canada have one of the best healthcare systems in the world? If that how "collapsing" looks like to you, you might need to adjust your worldview.
      - momothereal 5y ago
        The problem here is mostly the lack of available nurses and doctors, who have to pull insane shifts to compensate. Hospitals are also very concentrated in urban areas. Canada has 30% less nurses per capita than the US.
      - hourislate 5y ago
        You obviously haven't been to a hospital in Toronto in the last 10 years. Go visit St Joes, you walk in and take a ticket like you're at the butchers. The ticket is to get in line for administration. After administration you wait 12 hours for someone to see you. Just peek through the emerg doors and you see people in hallways lying in beds. The Canadian medical system is shit compared to the US medical system. Disclaimer: EXPAT who has used both.
gpm 5y ago
It's important to remember that this is what the mortality looks like after all the measures that were put in place to protect against covid. I.e. after repeated reasonably strict lock-downs, masks, travel restrictions, and so on and so forth. The increase in alcohol and drug deaths shouldn't be compared to the number of covid deaths that did occur to judge those measures, but to the number of covid deaths that didn't.
- bsaul 5y ago
  Unfortunately, I don’t think we have any definitive answer as to what those measures really did to prevent covid deaths, nor do i think will we ever (eg: the recent debate on sweden handling of covid)
  - lettergram 5y ago
    I don’t think you can ever get anything definitive. But if you compare Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. All in the same region, with very similar cultures, similar diets, similar language, etc etc You can see the difference clear enough to make inferences. There were a lot of people in the scientific community, Perhaps the majority, suggested Sweden’s method was superior to what many other countries were doing. The fact is, people are effectively believing what they want. There wouldn’t be a need for censorship if the truth was clear.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      The clarity presupposes that 'cumulative covid deaths / million' is the ultimate measure of a society's worth and achievement. We are incredibly focused on this one metric, to the expense of literally everything else.
    - benjaminwootton 5y ago
      You could compare the relative performance of US states for an even better comparator, eg Florida and Texas. I know they are in the news now, but they’ve been open all year and performed better than many more restricted states. Sweden is apparently much more dense in the cities, has larger cities, bigger migrant population etc so apparently making comparisons across Scandinavia isn’t as helpful as you would expect.
blue-wizard21 5y ago
In anti-vaccine communities, there is a widespread theory, generally considered misinformation/conspiracy, that the Covid vaccines increase the rate of heart attacks and cardiac disease, and that deaths from these causes have spiked in recent months. Is that claim consistent or inconsistent with this dataset?
- base698 5y ago
  One of the data sets from the UK show excess deaths of heart attack and stroke in people under 50. Granted overdoses can cause cardiac arrest.
- 542458 5y ago
  This is not the dataset you’d need to prove or disprove that. That said, the various covid vaccines currently have research and record-keeping attention directed at them that few other things in the history of humanity can claim. If there was such a correlation I would expect somebody reputable to have shown it by now.
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    OSHA is not allowed to publish vaccine side-effect data.
- Supermancho 5y ago
  The Anti-vax people are nuts, so everything is kinda mixed up to serve their personal agendas and those that are "of like mind" to some extent. This dataset speaks nothing to an existing concern. You want to look at studies like these: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/covid-19-cardiac-manifestations-in-adults#H589742952 https://www.uptodate.com/contents/covid-19-cardiac-manifesta... https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-sees-probable-link-between-pfizer-vaccine-small-number-myocarditis-cases-2021-06-01/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-sees-probab... COVID vaccines have triggered carditis or (possibly underlying) heart failure in people under 30 which has been expanded to all adults. I am in stage 2 heart failure (medication controlled perm afib, have to sleep on my right side or everything goes numb AND I probably have to get cardioverted, etc). I have not had a vaccine and my cardiologists have suggested I don't yet. I've had 3 open heart surgeries and my heart won't suffer another surgical insult, so although I'm super cautious, I always do what my cardiologists tell me. The rest of my family (brother, dad, sister, etc) have been vaccinated.
rob_c 5y ago
An unfortunately very anti certain-narratives title. Thank you gc.ca for covering something with hard fact. Living in another country with statistically provable damage driven by recent policy (that by scale is demonstrably larger than the benefit) it's a difficult position to hold even with data as you will be called alarmist, heartless or nonsensical. It's very unfortunate to read this, I wonder does anyone know does Canada's policy on marijuana at all correlate with this recent problem (akin to Scotland thinking relaxing drugs policy wouldn't be making things worse) or is this driven by other causes? (Genuine question sorry, did some quick googling but I must be getting tired I'm getting conflicting information)
- gpm 5y ago
  Canadian here - I don't know of any data that addresses your question about marijuana, and I'm not even really sure what that data would look like. Could you give an example of data on this topic that might be interesting? My gut feeling is probably not, legalizing marijuana definitely made marijuana more popular, but I haven't seen any reason to believe it's increasing the popularity of still illegal drugs or alcohol (the sources of these deaths). If anything I would expect that it competes with them (but again have no data to back that up).
  - rob_c 5y ago
    Thanks for letting me know. Not sure what data would show that, maybe if there was a strong increase associated in time with legal drug policy change(s)? Other than that, I suppose a link between prosecutions and deaths... I worry that lockdowns haven't helped situations like this, but saying that is... inflammatory...
- Tiktaalik 5y ago
  tbh I'm not sure anything has really changed in Canada since cannabis was legalized. A collective shrug from the populace.
  - rob_c 5y ago
    Interesting to hear. Thanks
c0ckm4st3r 5y ago
The two best things I love: * Sucking cock * Talking about covid.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Total Deaths in Ontario: 2019-2020* 115,126 2018-2019 109,019 And the overall death rate is roughly inline with the population growth, which is about 1.7 percent and normal variation. If official number of COVID deaths is accurate. 9,400 people died of COVID in Ontario. Assuming those 9,400 deaths were all in the ICU and none at home or palliative care. There are 400 hospitals in the Province. So average of COVID deaths per hospital/per year is 9400/400 = 23.5 I can easily see how 23 more people in a community serviced by a hospital could have committed suicide due to drug abuse over losing their business, job, or livelihood or just being locked up with nothing else to do but think.

121 points by angelzen 5y ago

> Based on the newly updated provisional dataset released today from the Canadian Vital Statistics Death Database, from the end of March 2020 to the beginning of April 2021, an estimated 62,203 deaths were reported among Canadians aged 0 to 64. This represents 5,535 more deaths than expected were there no pandemic, after accounting for changes in the population such as aging. Over the same period, 1,380 COVID-19 deaths have been attributed to the same age group (those younger than 65), suggesting that the excess mortality is, in large part, related to other factors such as increases in the number deaths attributed to causes associated with substance use and misuse, including unintentional (accidental) poisonings and diseases and conditions related to alcohol consumption.

codeecan 5y ago
The summary is the lock downs resulted in +4,155 excess deaths under 65 for 2020? Thats pretty damning for the government and a confirmation of what anti-lock down protesters have been saying since last year. If they let under 65s free while sheltering the vulnerable and keeping mask and distance protocol would there be 4x the covid deaths, probably not. And we could have avoided the ~$400+ billion dollar deficit.
- chrisfosterelli 5y ago
  It's not immediately obvious that the excess deaths are lockdown related deaths. There's also a growing overdose epidemic among that age group, for example.
  - codeecan 5y ago
    It's well supported that the combination of lock down isolation[1] in addition to the free CERB money resulted in the spike of drug abuse / suicide deaths[2]. [1] https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-coronavirus-is-killing-thousands-so-is-the-lockdown/ https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-coronavirus-is-killing-thousa... [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-pandemic-opioid-addiction-overdose-1.5606188 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-pandemic-opioid-addict... ... And I don't believe we have even begun to see the psychological / developmental effects of isolation and distance learning on young kids.
    - nomdep 5y ago
      But we can see the impact of those who has become orphans because of COVID. I prefer your armchair problems any day
      - atomicUpdate 5y ago
        The results of the study are that more orphans were created by the lockdowns than covid.
        nomdep 5y ago
        The study doesn’t say those who die because of their addiction during lockdown were parents.
    - DanBC 5y ago
      No, it's absolutely not well supported that deaths by suicide have increased. I mean, from your own link: > We don’t have data that the lockdowns are causing more suicides,
  - dcolkitt 5y ago
    I would guess that people who are socially isolated and unemployed are more likely to engage in drug abuse.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    I believe that increasing trend in overdose deaths was accounted for in the excess mortality calculation used in the article.
- driverdan 5y ago
  That's not what it says at all. This is preliminary and no conclusions have been made. It could be that 4155 COVID deaths were not properly tested and incorrectly categorized.
  - sct202 5y ago
    Yeah, restrictions in Canada varied by region and shifted on and off, so it would take a lot more analysis to say one way or the other.
  - MatteoFrigo 5y ago
    I disagree. The paper goes into some details explaining how many deaths are due to alcohol abuse vs. poisoning etc. They also have a list of conditions that they associate with the various causes of death. For example, if somebody dies of alcoholic gastritis, they classify the death as alcohol-related. Now, like all estimates, I am sure there are errors, but it's not like they haven't done their homework. There isn't enough data in the paper to blame the lockdown per se, however. E.g., it could be that the media fear-mongering is driving people crazy more than usual. There is no way to tell.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    There could actually be way less covid deaths due to improper testing. I'm glad people are finally admitting that there could be problems with covid testing.

Tiktaalik 5y ago

> Mortality patterns from unintentional poisoning have been of particular interest, as there is evidence in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia that substance use has increased in 2020 compared with previous years, while availability and access to harm reduction programs, supervised consumption services, and in-person support services for substance use may have been disrupted during the pandemic. Deaths from accidental poisoning can include different circumstances such as individuals using substances recreationally along with those who mistakenly ingest too much prescription or over-the-counter medications. Kind of understating things here. There's a toxic drug crisis in this country and it has killed thousands upon thousands in recent years. This was happening well before the pandemic. Literally 5 people every day in British Columbia are dying due to overdoses, directly related from the fact that the drugs are poisoned, not what they appear, and it has become impossible to ascertain a correct dosage. This should be an election issue (Canada is having an election issue atm) but sadly it won't be. BC's health officer, who everyone has listened to during this pandemic, has begged the Federal government (the Province and City of Vancouver also begging) to decriminalize drugs to help with this issue, but the Feds have done nothing.

monkeybutton 5y ago
At this point I don't believe real change will happen until the majority of voters are somehow personally affected by this epidemic of overdoses. Canadian society has a very strong puritanical undercurrent to it that is rarely acknowledged. I've heard in casual conversation people say that addicts overdosing is a "problem that solves itself". Until these peoples' views are changed, the suffering will continue.
- john_moscow 5y ago
  I think, the problem is deeper. People turn towards drugs when something else in their life is terribly broken and they see no way of fixing it. And I suspect that the ongoing erosion of the middle class has something to do with it. I think the current popular viewpoint that we should just be ok with a growing fraction of the population effectively committing a gradual mental suicide, welcome it and make it easier, is totally wrong.

pessimizer 5y ago

Correction: Under-65 excess mortality exceeds under-65 Covid-19 deaths.

OJFord 5y ago
That resolves an ambiguity; it's not particularly charitable to call it a 'correction' though, IMO. Also, I know it's not standard, but this almost wants a '(July)' (or even April?) in the title. Not to mention that it's not the original title.. but then, much like a tweet, the submitter's just trying to call out the relevant/intended part of a much broader page.
- angelzen 5y ago
  Fair. Luckily there is an edit button :)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

bopbeepboop 5y ago

Extended lockdowns were always QALY negative for populations under 60. The destruction from this panic will manifest over decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year

hilbertseries 5y ago
You’re comparing mortality rates with lockdowns and determining that we’d be better off without lockdowns. But your benchmark then needs to be covid19 mortality without lockdowns and with potential healthcare collapse.
- hourislate 5y ago
  >potential healthcare collapse Hate to break the news to you but the Canadian healthcare system collapsed a long time before Corona. Just ask anyone who has been to a hospital in Toronto before Corona.
  - oblio 5y ago
    Doesn't Canada have one of the best healthcare systems in the world? If that how "collapsing" looks like to you, you might need to adjust your worldview.
    - momothereal 5y ago
      The problem here is mostly the lack of available nurses and doctors, who have to pull insane shifts to compensate. Hospitals are also very concentrated in urban areas. Canada has 30% less nurses per capita than the US.
    - hourislate 5y ago
      You obviously haven't been to a hospital in Toronto in the last 10 years. Go visit St Joes, you walk in and take a ticket like you're at the butchers. The ticket is to get in line for administration. After administration you wait 12 hours for someone to see you. Just peek through the emerg doors and you see people in hallways lying in beds. The Canadian medical system is shit compared to the US medical system. Disclaimer: EXPAT who has used both.

gpm 5y ago

It's important to remember that this is what the mortality looks like after all the measures that were put in place to protect against covid. I.e. after repeated reasonably strict lock-downs, masks, travel restrictions, and so on and so forth. The increase in alcohol and drug deaths shouldn't be compared to the number of covid deaths that did occur to judge those measures, but to the number of covid deaths that didn't.

bsaul 5y ago
Unfortunately, I don’t think we have any definitive answer as to what those measures really did to prevent covid deaths, nor do i think will we ever (eg: the recent debate on sweden handling of covid)
- lettergram 5y ago
  I don’t think you can ever get anything definitive. But if you compare Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. All in the same region, with very similar cultures, similar diets, similar language, etc etc You can see the difference clear enough to make inferences. There were a lot of people in the scientific community, Perhaps the majority, suggested Sweden’s method was superior to what many other countries were doing. The fact is, people are effectively believing what they want. There wouldn’t be a need for censorship if the truth was clear.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    The clarity presupposes that 'cumulative covid deaths / million' is the ultimate measure of a society's worth and achievement. We are incredibly focused on this one metric, to the expense of literally everything else.
  - benjaminwootton 5y ago
    You could compare the relative performance of US states for an even better comparator, eg Florida and Texas. I know they are in the news now, but they’ve been open all year and performed better than many more restricted states. Sweden is apparently much more dense in the cities, has larger cities, bigger migrant population etc so apparently making comparisons across Scandinavia isn’t as helpful as you would expect.

blue-wizard21 5y ago

In anti-vaccine communities, there is a widespread theory, generally considered misinformation/conspiracy, that the Covid vaccines increase the rate of heart attacks and cardiac disease, and that deaths from these causes have spiked in recent months. Is that claim consistent or inconsistent with this dataset?

base698 5y ago
One of the data sets from the UK show excess deaths of heart attack and stroke in people under 50. Granted overdoses can cause cardiac arrest.
542458 5y ago
This is not the dataset you’d need to prove or disprove that. That said, the various covid vaccines currently have research and record-keeping attention directed at them that few other things in the history of humanity can claim. If there was such a correlation I would expect somebody reputable to have shown it by now.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  OSHA is not allowed to publish vaccine side-effect data.
Supermancho 5y ago
The Anti-vax people are nuts, so everything is kinda mixed up to serve their personal agendas and those that are "of like mind" to some extent. This dataset speaks nothing to an existing concern. You want to look at studies like these: https://www.uptodate.com/contents/covid-19-cardiac-manifestations-in-adults#H589742952 https://www.uptodate.com/contents/covid-19-cardiac-manifesta... https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-sees-probable-link-between-pfizer-vaccine-small-number-myocarditis-cases-2021-06-01/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israel-sees-probab... COVID vaccines have triggered carditis or (possibly underlying) heart failure in people under 30 which has been expanded to all adults. I am in stage 2 heart failure (medication controlled perm afib, have to sleep on my right side or everything goes numb AND I probably have to get cardioverted, etc). I have not had a vaccine and my cardiologists have suggested I don't yet. I've had 3 open heart surgeries and my heart won't suffer another surgical insult, so although I'm super cautious, I always do what my cardiologists tell me. The rest of my family (brother, dad, sister, etc) have been vaccinated.

rob_c 5y ago

An unfortunately very anti certain-narratives title. Thank you gc.ca for covering something with hard fact. Living in another country with statistically provable damage driven by recent policy (that by scale is demonstrably larger than the benefit) it's a difficult position to hold even with data as you will be called alarmist, heartless or nonsensical. It's very unfortunate to read this, I wonder does anyone know does Canada's policy on marijuana at all correlate with this recent problem (akin to Scotland thinking relaxing drugs policy wouldn't be making things worse) or is this driven by other causes? (Genuine question sorry, did some quick googling but I must be getting tired I'm getting conflicting information)

gpm 5y ago
Canadian here - I don't know of any data that addresses your question about marijuana, and I'm not even really sure what that data would look like. Could you give an example of data on this topic that might be interesting? My gut feeling is probably not, legalizing marijuana definitely made marijuana more popular, but I haven't seen any reason to believe it's increasing the popularity of still illegal drugs or alcohol (the sources of these deaths). If anything I would expect that it competes with them (but again have no data to back that up).
- rob_c 5y ago
  Thanks for letting me know. Not sure what data would show that, maybe if there was a strong increase associated in time with legal drug policy change(s)? Other than that, I suppose a link between prosecutions and deaths... I worry that lockdowns haven't helped situations like this, but saying that is... inflammatory...
Tiktaalik 5y ago
tbh I'm not sure anything has really changed in Canada since cannabis was legalized. A collective shrug from the populace.
- rob_c 5y ago
  Interesting to hear. Thanks

c0ckm4st3r 5y ago

The two best things I love: * Sucking cock * Talking about covid.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Total Deaths in Ontario: 2019-2020* 115,126 2018-2019 109,019 And the overall death rate is roughly inline with the population growth, which is about 1.7 percent and normal variation. If official number of COVID deaths is accurate. 9,400 people died of COVID in Ontario. Assuming those 9,400 deaths were all in the ICU and none at home or palliative care. There are 400 hospitals in the Province. So average of COVID deaths per hospital/per year is 9400/400 = 23.5 I can easily see how 23 more people in a community serviced by a hospital could have committed suicide due to drug abuse over losing their business, job, or livelihood or just being locked up with nothing else to do but think.