CDC: Overdose Deaths During Pandemic Hit Highest Levels Since Opioid Crisis Began

CDC: Overdose Deaths During Pandemic Hit Highest Levels Since Opioid Crisis Began


From September 2019 to Deptember 2020, drug overdose deaths in the U.S. increased by nearly 29 percent, according to a new CDC report.

The report found that 87,000 Americans overdosed during that time period, representing the highest number of overdose deaths recorded in a year since the opioid crisis began in the 1990s.

The CDC noted the actual number of overdose deaths is likely higher: “Provisional drug overdose death data are often incomplete, and the degree of completeness varies by jurisdiction and 12-month ending period,” the CDC stated. “Consequently, the numbers of drug overdose deaths are underestimated based on provisional data relative to final data and are subject to random variation.”

The Blaze reported:

The largest increases in drug overdose deaths happened in April and May 2020, when government-mandated lockdowns were the strictest.

The areas with the largest increases in drug overdose deaths: District of Columbia (61.2%), Louisiana (54%), Kentucky (50%), West Virginia (47.3%), and Colorado (43%).

Also this week, Maryland’s Opioid Operational Command Center revealed that 2,773 people died from drug and alcohol overdoses, the most by far in the state since records were kept. Nearly 84% of all reported overdoses were attributed to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.

A December AP report found that deaths from overdoses in San Francisco, CA far outweighed deaths from COVID-19.

In 2020, A total of 621 people have died of drug overdoses in the city this compared to 173 deaths from the Wuhan Virus.

At the time, the Washington Examiner wrote:

The spike in overdoses is inflamed by fentanyl use, which is a synthetic opioid that can be 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. The number of overdose deaths could have been much higher, as well, if Narcan hadn’t been used more than 3,000 times from January to November to reverse overdoses.

In 2019, 441 people died of overdoses, meaning 2020 saw a more than 40% increase in overdose deaths.

For the full report, click HERE.

Stanford Doc: Lockdowns are “Biggest Public Health Mistake” Ever Made


Stanford University Medical School professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya called the COVID-19 lockdowns “biggest public health mistake we’ve ever made” and says the harm it causes to society is “catastrophic.”

In an interview with the Dialy Clout, as reported by Newsweek, Battacharya said the lockdowns are having a devastating effect on both short and long-term public health.

The Stanford doctor is behind the Great Barrington Declaration, a petition signed by thousands of medical professionals and practitioners, which calls for an end to the lockdowns.

In the interview, Bhattacharya said the declaration stems from “two basic facts.”

“One is that people who are older have a much higher risk from dying from COVID than people who are younger…and that’s a really important fact because we know who his most vulnerable, it’s people that are older. So the first plank of the Great Barrington Declaration: let’s protect the vulnerable. The other idea is that the lockdowns themselves impose great harm on people. Lockdowns are not a natural normal way to live.”

He also pointed to the disparate effect the lockdowns have based on socioeconomic status: “People who are poor face much more hardship from the lockdowns than people who are rich,” he said. 

The impact the lockdowns is having on children appears to be quite devastating. According to a recent report, from January 2020 to November 2020, self-harm claims have risen by 333 percent and overdoses have gone up by 120 percent among 13 to 18 year-olds.

In an email to Newsweek, Bhattacharya said, “I stand behind my comment that the lockdowns are the single worst public health mistake in the last 100 years. We will be counting the catastrophic health and psychological harms, imposed on nearly every poor person on the face of the earth, for a generation.”

“At the same time,” he wrote, “they have not served to control the epidemic in the places where they have been most vigorously imposed. In the US, they have – at best – protected the ‘non-essential’ class from COVID, while exposing the essential working class to the disease. The lockdowns are trickle down epidemiology.”

For the full report, click HERE.

Study: COVID Lockdowns Had No Clear Benefit Over Voluntary Preventative Measures


Well, it sure is convenient that this information is coming out just in time for the Biden presidency…

According to Newsweek, a new study evaluating global COVID-19 responses found that lockdowns “did not provide significantly more benefits to slowing the spread of the disease than other voluntary measures…”

The study was conducted by Stanford researchers and analyzed the growth in COVID cases in 10 countries in early 2020.

“The study compared cases in England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the U.S. – all countries that implemented mandatory lockdown orders and business closures – to South Korea and Sweden, which implemented less severe, voluntary responses. It aimed to analyze the effect that less restrictive or more restrictive measures had on changing individual behavior and curbing the transmission of the virus,” writes Newsweek.

The researchers found “no clear, significant beneficial effect [of more restrictive measures] on case growth in any country.”

There has been a growing chorus of strict lockdown proponents doing complete 180s as it relates to their COVID policies, and now politicians like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot are breathlessly claiming they must reopen businesses quickly.

Earlier this week, Cuomo tweeted, “We simply cannot stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass. The cost is too high. We will have nothing left to open. We must reopen the economy, but we must do it smartly and safely.”

Lightfoot said reopening is imperative because the closures forced residents into “secret, underground parties in hotels and businesses.”

“If we have people and give them an outlet for entertainment … we have much more of an opportunity, in my view, to be able to regulate and control that environment,” Lightfoot said.

“Let’s bring it out of the shadows. Let’s allow them to have some recreation in restaurants, in bars, where we can actually work with responsible owners and managers to regulate and protect people from COVID-19.”

These Democrat leaders couldn’t even wait for Biden’s inauguration to do an about-face on their COVID policies which we all know were put in place to damage President Trump’s legacy.


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