You're speaking as if this article gives us certainty that the 400,000 extra deaths this year, compared to last year, are due to COVID. The article makes no such claim. Maybe that's not what you meant, though, because clearly there are things like drug overdoses, suicides, domestic violence, etc., that can also explain a lot of it as well. Tens of thousands of people die of fentanyl overdoses each year, and the number was growing up to this point, so it's not farfetched to consider that the COVID restrictions have resulted in more people taking addictive drugs or killing themselves out of desperation.
I’ve worked in four emergency departments in three states this year. All of them have been overwhelmed by patients with covid, and not patients with overdoses, suicides, or domestic violence. Granted the incidence of those non-covid pathologies are likely higher this year, but they are no-way elevated at the scale of covid-19. I haven’t seen, or heard from any colleagues, hospitals brimming with suicides and overdoses to the point where they are filling an entire icu with those patients, or having so many domestic violence cases that they have to shut down operating rooms and convert them into icu beds.
Thank you for helping in all these emergency rooms, and I’m sorry that some people are downplaying the virus’s effects on mortality in the USA in 2020.
People floating potential alternate explanations is not a downplaying COVID. It's trying to better understand the issue through open-minded inquiry, and giving people like the OP an opportunity to help inform people by sharing their reasoning and personal experience.
Equating the consideration of different theories with the rejection of one particular theory will discourage the kind of free discourse that makes society more informed.
I've heard this argument many times over. While it's certainly plausible, I've yet to see real statistics supporting the claim that there's been a significant rise in suicides / drug overdoses during the pandemic.
After doing some research on 2020 suicide rates, the only legitimate source I found suggested there was a decrease in suicide rate towards the beginning of the pandemic due to a "honeymoon pulling together" phase and no peer-reviewed data thereafter.
Half this country didn't care about drug addicts before. Now all of a sudden people care about drug addicts. They don't care though when it comes to cutting social programs or health care reform.
People didn't care when Wal-Mart decimated mainstreet and Amazon killed who was left. Now people are all about small business.
Sick of the hypocrisy. It's sad we can't take care of our own people in this country.
