20X Higher Risk of Drug Overdose Death than COVID-19 Death in British Columbia, Canada
It’s worse! Drug overdoses impact the young while COVID-19 impacts the old.
I recently came across a peer-reviewed study from back in September of 2021 that I hadn’t seen before. It’s an interesting study comparing the mortality risk of illicit drug overdose to COVID-19 in British Columbia, Canada.
Remember when the theatrical non-pharmaceutical intervention measures were put in place back in the early days of 2020? You know, the lockdowns, quarantine of asymptomatic people, and arbitrary social distancing rules. Fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones that (while I wasn’t an expert in public health, virology, or epidemiology) sensed something wasn’t right. This was probably because I am something of an independent, free thinker and enjoy digging/seeking truth on matters of import to me.
Can you guess what I found out about all the nonsense theatrical pandemic policies put in place at the start of the pandemic?
Some people out there don’t want to admit they were bamboozled and still hold the fanciful dream that all the sacrifices the government forced us to make actually made a difference and saved lives. But they didn’t, we know they didn’t, we have the evidence from this pandemic and none of these measures were ever before even considered as something to implement in the event of a large pandemic.
The cost benefit of all the non-pharmaceutical measures implemented across most of the world was previously known to be extremely poor. Meaning that they provide little to no benefit while causing harm, extreme harm in some cases.
We can’t let what our governments and health official have done fade from our memory. We must hold them accountable and never forget so this never happens again.
Lest we forget.
More on that topic will be saved for a later date.
Overdose Study from September 2021
The study is titled “Comparing mortality from covid-19 to mortality due to overdose: A micromort analysis”.
The timeframe the study looked at was from January-October 2020. So, keep in mind as you read on that this data was from very early in the pandemic. I suspect as the pandemic went on, and vaccine mandates were implemented, the risks outlined below either stayed the same or got worse. But this is just conjecture on my part at the moment.
To make the risk analysis easier to understand the authors use something called micromorts. Micromorts are simply a measure of risk and a mortality risk of 1 micromort is equal to a 1-in-a-million risk of death.
From Jan-Oct 2020 there were 258 COVID-19 deaths and 1048 illicit drug overdose deaths. That’s 4 times as many deaths from overdose and most of and approximately 180 of the 258 deaths were in long term care homes where illicit drug overdoses don’t occur (more on that later).
The COVID-19 deaths were officially recorded COVID-19 deaths as of the date of submission of this paper which was December 2020. Something of importance to note with these numbers is that they were derived from the BC CDC website data and as of December 2020, there was no consideration for deaths “with” vs “for” COVID-19 (there still isn’t based on my understanding) so the 258 number was probably less, making the below risk benefit analysis even worse.
The drug overdose mortality numbers during the study period also represent a 2 times increase from previous years. The authors blame the pandemic control measures for this and I have no qualms with that.
The authors then compared the risk of death from COVID-19 versus the risk of death from drug overdoses. To make the comparison realistic, the authors removed COVID-19 deaths that occurred in long-term care facilities since illicit drug overdoses don’t occur in such facilities so those deaths cannot be used.
For people not living in long-term care facilities, the risk of death from COVID-19 was 0.05 micromorts. Remember, a micromort is a 1/1,000,000 chance of dying, so 0.05 micromorts is equal to a 1 in 20 million chance of dying. Not so scary eh!
During the study time frame, the risk of dying from a drug overdose doubled compared to previous years, from 0.5 to 1 micromort.
So, the pandemic non-pharmaceutical interventions (ex. lockdowns) doubled the risk of drug overdose which was equal to a 20 times higher risk of death from drug overdose than from COVID-19. Remember that this comparison is for people of any age not in a long-term care facility. Pretty poor cost benefit there if you ask me!
The authors further analyzed the data based on age groups. One of the major reasons for doing this is that drug overdose risk is typically higher in younger age groups and COVID-19 death risk is lower in younger age groups. For instance, the study found that for people under the age of 40, the risk of COVID-19 death was statistically zero while the risk of drug overdose death was 0.9 micromorts.
This is just one clear example of how the pandemic measures have disproportionally, negatively impacted younger, working aged people, causing them loss of livelihoods and actual lost lives, all for the virtuous purpose of protecting the elderly. And I’m specifically talking about near end of life elderly who were already in long term care facilities.
The authors of this study provide some enlightening numbers about COVID-19 mortality risk. Up until October 2020, 70% of COVID-19 deaths were people in long term care facilities and the median age of deaths was 85 years. Adding even more context, average life expectancy in BC was 82.4 years.
I am not trying to be ageist here but what successful society in history causes excessive harm and death to younger demographics, which also significantly harms the economy, for the sole purpose of protecting individuals who have already passed average life expectancy.
Now, this doesn’t mean I think we should have thrown these at-risk individuals under the COVID-19 bus. Not at all. Right from the start of the pandemic, there were many experts calling for targeted protection. An example of this is the Great Barrington Declaration. But of course the authors of this declaration, who were previously know to be experts in epidemiology, were purposely slandered and censored by Fauci and crew. Who also called the authors “fringe” which they never were.
Study after study, data bomb after data bomb, and FOI request after FOI request are proving that our government and health officials did everything wrong during this pandemic and had no reliable, quality scientific evidence to support their policies, mandates, and actions during the pandemic.
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