> The two reports, released by the CDC on Thursday, show deaths from COVID-19 and drug overdoses, most notably synthetic opioids like fentanyl, were the primary drivers of the drop in life expectancy.
Not entirely surprising wrt COVID. The drug overdose deaths are a sad situation. I remember first hearing about the epidemic of ODs a couple of years back.
There is a bit of a common theme between this article and the other current article about the planned obsolence and inherent crappiness of most modern products. (This one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34092749).
I have noticed this gloomy attitude from many people my age, a sort of existential despair and belief that we sit somewhere near the end of the world as we know it. I don't personally share this belief (maybe just out of stubborn naivete and optimism), but I do understand why people feel it. The modern media seems to love these kinds of stories, and there's always some crisis being pushed between global warming, economic woes, and the rise of some fairly troubling and extreme candidates in American politics.
Not sure what my point is here, but there's definitely a contingent of young folks (late millenial to gen-z seems to be the main demographic) who seem to have lost hope in the future. I hope we can find our way to a more hopeful collective spirit.
One last comment on this already rambling post: when I recently watched Apollo 11 I was quite moved by the spirit pervading the whole enterprise - this idea that we sent people to the moon with hopes for the whole world. That everyone was watching, hoping, praying for the success of the mission. That is a sort of unity that is awfully hard to find today.
Not entirely surprising wrt COVID. The drug overdose deaths are a sad situation. I remember first hearing about the epidemic of ODs a couple of years back.
There is a bit of a common theme between this article and the other current article about the planned obsolence and inherent crappiness of most modern products. (This one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34092749).
I have noticed this gloomy attitude from many people my age, a sort of existential despair and belief that we sit somewhere near the end of the world as we know it. I don't personally share this belief (maybe just out of stubborn naivete and optimism), but I do understand why people feel it. The modern media seems to love these kinds of stories, and there's always some crisis being pushed between global warming, economic woes, and the rise of some fairly troubling and extreme candidates in American politics.
Not sure what my point is here, but there's definitely a contingent of young folks (late millenial to gen-z seems to be the main demographic) who seem to have lost hope in the future. I hope we can find our way to a more hopeful collective spirit.
One last comment on this already rambling post: when I recently watched Apollo 11 I was quite moved by the spirit pervading the whole enterprise - this idea that we sent people to the moon with hopes for the whole world. That everyone was watching, hoping, praying for the success of the mission. That is a sort of unity that is awfully hard to find today.