Category: COVID-19 and Public Health

Mass hysteria: 90% of Americans Believe US is Suffering a Mental Health Crisis

Posted on by Devon Herrick

According to a new survey from CNN and the Kaiser Family Foundation an overwhelming majority of Americans believe the United States is suffering through a mental health crisis.

Nine out of 10 adults said ​they believed that there’s a mental health crisis in the US today. Asked to rate the severity of six specific mental health concerns, Americans put the opioid epidemic near the top, with more than two-thirds of people identifying it as a crisis rather than merely a problem. More than half identified mental health issues among children and teenagers as a crisis, as well as severe mental illness in adults.

The broad concern is well-founded, rooted in both personal experience and national trends.

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Friday Links

Posted on by John C. Goodman
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The Changing Demographics of Covid Deaths

Posted on by Devon Herrick

People are still dying from Covid although who is dying and how many has changed as we enter the third year of the pandemic. Covid has always been a killer of elderly people, but it’s also taken a heavy toll on younger people who were considered essential workers and could not shelter in place. This is data from California:

From April 2020 through December 2021, Covid killed an average of 3,600 people a month, making it the third-leading cause of death in the state cumulatively for that time period, behind heart disease and cancer. From December 2020 through February 2021, it briefly overtook heart disease as the leading cause of death, taking the lives of more than 38,300 Californians in just three months. During its most recent peak, in January 2022, Covid took about 5,900 lives.

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