I thought this might be a useful place to put up articles on sources of non-covid deaths that are likely to be pandemic-related.
This story refers to a rise of at least 20,000 overdose deaths during the pandemic.
‘Staggering loss’: Overdose deaths spike in US during pandemic
The US was already fighting a serious opioid epidemic; the pandemic exacerbated the crisis, new statistics show.
Overdose deaths soared to a record 93,000 last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States government reported on Wednesday.
That estimate far eclipses the high of about 72,000 drug overdose deaths reached the previous year and amounts to a 29 percent increase.
Link: ‘Staggering loss’: Overdose deaths spike in US during pandemic | Coronavirus pandemic News | Al Jazeera
Here is a figure for Georgia just published. showing a pandemic-period rise of, I think, about 600:
CDC Reports Overdose Deaths In Georgia Rose At Least 38% During Pandemic
Preliminary data show a record number of overdose deaths nationwide in the 12-month period ending in January 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday.
In Georgia, more than 1,900 people died of drug-related causes, which is a 38.8% increase over data from the previous year.
Nationwide, more than 31% or at least 95,230 people lost their lives due to the disease of addiction over the last year.
The CDC still believes that’s an undercount (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/report006.pdf).
Numbers suggesting overdose deaths were accelerating came at the end of 2020, when the CDC estimated at least 81,000 Americans died after drug overdoses between June 2019 and May 2020. That number rose to more than 93,000 as of data available earlier this summer.
I imagine the US figure will be an underestimate too.
These are only overdose deaths - other drug-related deaths are also likely to have risen.
Georgia is a smallish state with 4m people, or about 1/80 of the US population (320m?). OTOH it’s on the relatively poor side, likely to have more drug deaths than the national average.
If the Georgia overdose increase did multiply up across the US, it would mean the true US figure would be an increase of about 48,000 in overdose deaths.
It’s a bit early to call obviously, but at say 30,000, that’s already 5% of the US supposed pandemic covid total.