this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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[โ€“] zero_spelled_with_an_ecks@programming.dev 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

These types of articles tend to be conservative in their outlook. Things are getting better, so no need to change anything, right?

But let's look at just to drug overdose deaths mentioned in the article. Here's a graph from the CDC:

You'll note that, yes, there is a downward trend from 2022-2023. The part that ignores is there's a much larger rising trend. I'd compare it to claiming global warming is getting better because winter is colder.

I'm not saying the numbers going down is a bad thing, I just don't think two data points going in the direction you want to claim outweighs the rest of the data.

[โ€“] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 5 points 2 months ago

Yeah. There's also this:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/us-life-expectancy-increase-rcna184502

It sounds great, until you learn that life expectancy was 78.8 years before Covid and is now 78.4 years. Covid isn't killing a whole bunch of people anymore, so there isn't some big improvement that is being masked by Covid deaths, so basically we're just returning to where we were, slightly worse than. And where we were is bad.