Here's some more data you can find if you dig around in the BC Centre for Disease Control website.
First let's look at the differences in the years of potential life lost in 2019 versus 2021:
What do you see? Yes, there's COVID appearing at number 6 on the 2021 chart, but what really strikes me is the big yellow bar of illicit drug deaths, which moves up from the number three spot to the number two spot in just two years.
Stated differently, illicit drug fatalities go from being roughly seven percent of years of life lost pre-pandemic to an incredible 13 percent of life-years lost in the final year of the pandemic. By comparison, only about 3 percent of life-years were lost in 2021 due to COVID. The increase in years of life lost to illicit drug use was twice to years of life lost to COVID.
How many of those extra drug deaths were as a result of the social isolation caused by lock-downs? I think it's really important we figure that out before another variant of COVID comes along.
Here's a breakdown for the younger age groups for 2019 and 2021:
You can see COVID deaths as the short red lines well down in the 2021 graphs. (It's so short as to be almost invisible on the <19 chart, but it's there.) In both years it's really easy to see the yellow lines for deaths due to illicit drug use.
Hell, taken together, illicit drug use and suicide killed half of the people age 19 to 39 who died in BC in 2021. COVID killed about two percent of the people who died in that age group. The increase in drug deaths among young adults during the pandemic dwarfs the number of deaths from COVID.
You can also see a huge increase in illicit drug deaths in the 40-59 age group. In 2021 illicit drugs were killing almost as many 40 to 59-year-olds as cancer!
Am I the only one that thinks maybe we should re-think our public health priorities?
That basically mirrors what I have seen in our very rural area of NE Washington. Yes, a few elderly died of (or with) covid, but the number of young to middle-aged who died from overdose or suicide increased more noticeably. While we have also seen a lot more heart problems lately, I'm not aware of anyone below 60 in my county dying from covid.
I completely agree with you, Bruce. My analyses are nearly identical to yours. And somehow pointing this out has landed me in counselling(!).