We haven’t gotten much information on Deaths of Despair (suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol-driven deaths like liver failure) over the course of the pandemic, despite them being a talking point in the early days of lockdowns. This doesn’t mean they aren’t happening. It takes a while for this data to come out cleanly—we’re still waiting for even the 2018 totals from the CDC on causes of death in the United States.
We do know a few things, though:
An organization named the Well Being Trust, which advocates in the arena of mental health and addiction policy, estimated in May that excess (meaning, beyond the expected number per year in a time of low unemployment) Deaths of Despair could, over the next ten years, reach a total as high as 154,000, with the number per year fading over each year as unemployment recedes. This was their high-end estimate, and even it put Deaths of Despair at fewer than 16,000 in 2020 and fewer than 30,000 in 2021.
These are enormous numbers. They should not be taken lightly. The societal environment in which such deaths come to pass should also not be taken lightly. It would be, as the categorization implies, an environment of despair.
At the same time, though, with confirmed coronavirus deaths in the United States currently around 210,000, and excess death totals (deaths beyond the average number for a given period in time in recent years) at least 65,000 beyond even that enormous 210K number, there is no good-faith argument to be made that the deaths we’re seeing are primarily driven by anything other than the disease itself. Yes, we want unemployment to go down. We should all want unemployment to go down. But finding ways to do that which don’t contribute to the flare-ups of the virus is necessary if the goal is to minimize the number of Americans dying, which seems a reasonable goal.
And, since I have you here, the CDC estimate for flu deaths per flu season in recent years has ranged from roughly 12,000 (in 2010-11) to roughly 61,000 (in 2017-18). So, again, differerent order of magnitude, and different level of severity.
