Over the past few years the term “Deaths of Despair” has become all too common.
It’s not a new term; after the fall of the Soviet Union, the already poor state of Russians’ health deteriorated and lifespans declined. The same effect has been seen in places where social cohesion and support structures deteriorated for some reason or another.
And, not that many people know it, it was known in public health circles (before they conveniently forgot) that excessive “Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions” (NPIs) to address a public health crisis caused serious health problems that often were worse than the disease.
Anecdotally, we have all seen that since the start of the pandemic, lots of measurable and merely observable problems have popped up in society. School closures most obviously are related to the problem of learning loss and mental health decline in children, for instance, while…
