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Lockdowns Didn’t Stop COVID-19 But it Did Cause Record Number of Overdose Deaths

With each day that passes, the number of lives lost in COVID-19-related deaths continues to tragically grow. However, in a less noticed but equally important trend, we continue to gain insight into the countless deaths caused by lockdown measures intended to stop the virus’s spread.

The latest entry into this tragic account is a new data set showing drug overdose deaths skyrocketed in 2020 amid the height of pandemic lockdowns.

“New data shows that more Americans died of drug overdoses in the year leading to September 2020 than any 12-month period since the opioid epidemic began,” Axios reports. “The stubborn increase of such ‘deaths of despair’ shows that the opioid epidemic still has room to grow and that some of the social distancing steps we took to rein in the pandemic may have brought deadly side effects.”

Released this week by the Centers for Disease Control, the figures show that at least 87,000 people died from overdoses from October 2019 to September 2020. This amounts to a 29 percent increase from the same period in the previous year.

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THE FORT BRAGG MURDERS

Fort Bragg is home to two of the most important formations in the Pentagon’s sprawling, complex special-operations bureaucracy: the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, or ­USASOC, which includes the Rangers and the Green Berets; and JSOC, the “black ops” component of the military. Cloaked in secrecy and sloshing with money, JSOC has operational ­control over the most elite commando units of each of the major service branches, including the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 and the Army’s Delta Force, which it uses to carry out the nation’s most politically risky, no-fail missions, like the killing of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the emir of the Islamic State, in 2019. Over the past 20 years of continuous war, from the snowy passes of the Hindu Kush to the desert scrublands of Somalia, JSOC’s budget and autonomy have continuously grown, and so has the scope of its mission. Based out of a high-security compound inside Fort Bragg, it has become a covert military within the military.

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It’s About Time for Us to Stop Wearing Masks Outside

One of the last times I stepped outside my Brooklyn apartment without a mask on was in early spring 2020, just before the state issued a mask mandate. I remember because as my dog peed on a tree, a neighbor asked me pointedly where my mask was. Where I live, almost everyone wears a mask when they go outside. If a person sipping from an iced coffee with their mask pulled down approaches someone else on the sidewalk coming the other way, they will usually yank the mask back up, as if they’ve been caught partially dressed. The other day I noticed a woman sitting on a hill in the middle of a field with her face covered. There was no one near her.

For a while now, this has felt a little unnecessary, if understandable, given that we were still learning things about the virus and were trying to be as careful as possible. But now, as we’ve come to know more about the virus, as vaccinations are ramping up, and as we’re trying to figure out how to live with some level of COVID in a sustainable way, masking up outside when you’re at most briefly crossing paths with people is starting to feel barely understandable. Look: I believe masks (and even shaming) are indispensable in controlling the spread of the coronavirus. Despite early waffling, public health experts are virtually unanimously in support of them and have remained so even as our early dedication to scrubbing surfaces and Cloroxing veggies wound down.

In other words, as the pandemic has progressed, so has our understanding of what safety measures are truly most useful, and which aren’t worth the alcohol wipes. And I would like to calmly suggest that now is the time we should consider no longer wearing masks when we walk around outside.

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Oregon seeks to keep COVID mask mandate ‘indefinitely’

While some states are reopening businesses or dropping mask mandates altogether, Oregon is bucking the trend — floating an idea to require masks and social distancing indefinitely.

One of the state’s top health officials wants to require masks and social distancing in all businesses indefinitely.

“We are not out of the woods yet,” said Michael Wood, administrator for the Oregon department of Occupational Safety and Health department.

But not everyone is happy about the possible extension of the mask rules, which under state law expire on May 4. The agency has gotten a record number of public comments and nearly 60,000 people have signed a petition rejecting the proposal.

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