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A comment on The U.S. Just Lost 26 Years' Worth of Progress on Life Expectancy. Parent comment

Re:The U.S. Just Lost 26 Years' Worth of Progress on Life Ex... by thebooktocome on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @10:02AM (#33247286)
The number I could find for all cause drug overdose death (including everything in addition to fentanyl) for the last twelve months was 110k.

Cardiovascular disease 870k.

Cancer 610k.

Usual caveats apply to cause of death reporting, but fentanyl alone is not terribly relevant to this topic.

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Re:The U.S. Just Lost 26 Years' Worth of Progress on Life Ex... by furyofantares on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @10:43AM (#33247964)
If a typical fentanyl overdose is destroying 30-40 years of life expectancy and a typical covid death is destroying 5, then 40k fentanyl overdoses would be similar to 280k covid deaths in terms of life expectancy.

I don't know if my numbers are right, but your numbers don't lead me to dismiss fentanyl from the current conversation.

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Re:The U.S. Just Lost 26 Years' Worth of Progress on Life Ex... by thebooktocome on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @11:55AM (#33264019)
Yeah, I don’t think excess COVID deaths are driving life expectancy either. It’s the two things I listed in my comment, both of which are getting worse with time and are affecting people earlier and earlier.

Although I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that COVID infection does damage cardiovascular health.

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