Much like the previous year, 2021 was a constant deluge of news: much of it bad (failed insurrection, the persistence of a deadly pandemic, etc.), some of it good (vaccines, boosters, etc.), and almost all of it overwhelming. It was a year of grim milestones, such that the phrase “grim milestone” itself became a cliché incapable of capturing the breathtaking devastation wrought by phenomena such as the pandemic and natural disasters.
The presence of the pandemic in our lives likely kept one such horrifying development off the front page: This year’s surge in drug overdose deaths, which for the first time climbed past 100,000 in the 12-month period ending in April 2021. The numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, released in November, articulate a devastating new record of predicted deaths that came amid Covid-19’s ravages. The provisional number was a 28.5 percent increase from the 78,000 deaths in the prior year, with 75 percent of overdose deaths caused by opioids, mostly of the synthetic variety. As of early December, the predicted number of deaths for the 12-month period ending in May 2021 was slightly lower, but still above the 100,000 mark. (The number of reported deaths was slightly under 100,000 for both periods of time, but according to the NCHS, these numbers were underreported due to incomplete data.)
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