Peak Pandemic – Guess What Was Killing More Young Americans Than Covid

January 20, 2024 steven

among imitation graves set up by the Trail of Truth, near the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on September 24, 2022. (Photo by Stefani Reynolds / AFP) (Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

AFP via Getty Images

In 2021, Covid killed approximately 60,000 young Americans between 15 and 54 years old. By any measure, that is an awful statistic, representing a staggering number of loved ones lost to the virus.

But as awful as that statistic is, guess what killed even more young Americans.

It wasn’t guns, although almost 30,000 young Americans died from firearms that year, including homicides, suicides, and accidents.

It wasn’t cancer or heart disease, which primarily kill older people. Nor was it diseases like asthma or diabetes which, even though they can strike at early ages, rarely cause young people to die.

So what caused so many young people to die?

It was drug overdoses, which killed around 80,000 young Americans in 2021. And, as the below picture from the New England Journal of Medicine shows, the vast majority of those overdoses were related to opioids:

Cumulative Deaths from Drug Overdose Versus Deaths from Covid-19 among People 15 to 54 Years of Age, United States, 2021(Source: New England Journal of Medicine)

young Americans

New England Journal of Medicine

The opioid epidemic is ravaging our population, especially people who should have experienced decades more of life. To give young Americans the best chance at living long and meaningful lives, we need to concentrate more resources to combatting opioid use disorders.

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I am a physician and behavioral scientist at Duke University. My newest book, Sick to Debt (Yale University Press), explores the challenges of shared decision making between doctors and patients. My research and writing explores the quirks in human nature that influence our lives — the mixture of rational and irrational forces that affect our health, our happiness and the way our society functions. (What fun would it be to tackle just the easy problems?) I am currently exploring controversial issues about the role of values and preferences in health care decision making, from decisions at the bedside to policy decisions. I use the tools of decision psychology and behavioral economics to explore topics like informed consent, shared decision making and health care spending. My books include Pricing Life (MIT Press 2000) and Free Market Madness (Harvard Business Press, 2009), and Critical Decisions (Harper Collins).