Is the opioid death toll a thing in all of western society?

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But is it a "fair" price? All the subsidies and government contracts distort the entire operation, and the endless money printing just means someone, somewhere, will have an unpleasant awakening eventually. It is unlikely to be Elon Musk paying the true cost in the end. Much more likely that every American will pay, instead.

Not sure what you mean by fair. If only nasa did it, lots of folks would say it's fair because it's all government and there's no profit. NASA had a shuttle launch price of $1.6B per mission. That's a lot of money to send some toilet paper and a couple of folks to the space station. SpaceX charges $55MM a seat to transport people. I don't think there's that many seats, so this is inexpensive (so inexpensive that no other space force, for profit or not no matter how low the in country ages, etc. can match it).

There are other groups here - one is called United Launch Affiliation, etc, or something of that sort.

What happens with something like this is there's no initial investment unless someone calls it a hobby (like Bezos, but bezos wasn't around in the 1940s and 1950s to develop this stuff - nasa was rewarded for progress back then, not punishing for any chance of error - the latter is a predictable thing once efforts become politicized instead of progress-based). At any rate, Nasa recognizes they can't do anything for any reasonable budget at this point, gives up on a lot of their efforts in terms of launching people, especially, and searches for contractors to control costs. They award less than it costs to do things but their awards attract private money, so the ventures are funded by private and public dollars. If venture capital is lost, it's lost. Too bad, but it's unencumbered by publicly listed monies, etc (as in, you can lose money on a venture without getting sued).

We had a wholly private system of bridges and roads more than a century ago - it didn't work well. Then we built like crazy, that worked well. Then the government groups filled themselves with red tape instead of results and now we have crumbling infrastructure (which is a good lesson about costing things at the outset - project budgets are a fraction of future costs. If you build something, you'd better want it in the long term, because you can't just back out later).

We're generally quite delighted with spaceX here - we have a group who isn't going as slow as they can and milking projects as long as they can, but rather they're in growth phase and solving problems as fast as possible and initiating projects that aren't just government awards. We're sending people to space for an eighth or tenth of what it was costing under NASA, which leaves nasa to do other things. The amounts awarded to spaceX will be saved in launching about 20 astronauts. Perhaps sooner because the cargo loads that spaceX takes up may have covered a bunch more already. It's not just people that spaceX can launch more cheaply than china, it's everything of any significance, and they completely changed the outlook in regard to what can be done. Instead of assuming spacecraft are consumable, now everyone will be stuck figuring out how to make them reusable - it's not just a savings in spaceX.

Of course, half of the country hates musk because he's not a virtue signaler.
 
well, the dippy rule again. We go from the snide and nasty to the stupid.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/john-kerry-suggest-oil-workers-211114294.html
(our last president was infatuated with the idea that people in profitable industries could just make solar panels and batteries, despite the fact that without regard to any other costs, nobody can make such things profitably here just paying ongoing costs. Musk and panasonic changed that for batteries - the govco groups managed to waste money and disappear unless there's a few remaining operating only on government contracts....

....however, the platitudes arrive again. Never mind that just failed, we'll magically move oil workers into making something the Chinese make in huge amounts at a low price....again, except the Chinese are even better at it now and are technologically ahead on solar stuff. So, we can offer making things at a price that nobody will buy at using intellectual capital that is below the level of the lowest-cost producers.

It'll be interesting when the mid-terms come along.

I wonder if I can convince other independents to make something called the "numbers party" where proposals have to make numerical sense at the start (which is still below the threshhold of guaranteeing success, but at least you could weed out the ideas that are guaranteed failures and prevent idiots from attracting other idiots by proposing them).
 
Not sure what you mean by fair
Simply a "fair market price". Because there is so much government involved, plus military - some of which is probably secret - it is nigh on impossible to calculate what the actual market costs for the service is. Therefore, is SpaceX cheaper than all the competition because it is by far the best, most efficient and technologically forward thinking company in the world, or does it just hide it's costs and offer services well below market price for political and monopoly making purposes?

I don't pretend to have the answer to the question, but the murky Public-Private corporate government synergy makes everything difficult to judge. How do Musk's other ventures benefit from such government largesse? Musk is a bit of a polarising character, but I don't particularly love or hate him. He hasn't impressed me much with his drug taking and tweeting nonsense, (and ignoring of rules which would get lesser mortals imprisoned) but he can certainly get funding for all his projects, so definitely a clever guy. Obviously a believer in Other People's Money.
 
SpaceX doesn't hide all of their costs. One of the controversial things occurring here recently is that the other contractors managed to get government money to make infrastructure improvements. Somehow, Space X was left out. In a recent quote, spaceX had a higher bid than one of their competitors because they had to build infrastructure improvements into the contract. Why the bid still didn't go to the other group, I don't know, but suspect it has something to do with the government planning on spacex costing less in the long term to do the same thing.

The other company complained publicly, neglected to mention the government paid for improvements for them and called out spaceX for including infrastructure costs in the bid that "they weren't billing in their bid".

As far as why spaceX is chosen in general, though, it's almost certainly for two reasons:
1) they're capable and quick
2) they're overall cheapest

But they won't get all of the contracts as Nasa is looking to spread some risk (Bezos org. is coming along).

Far more private money is being invested in space than money from Nasa, though - not because it's deemed a good way in the future to get gov. contracts, but rather because the push is on here for private for-profit ventures in the future (commercial satellite spaces, the expectation of high dollar space tourism, etc).

I would assume spaceX's long-term goals are commercial and not governmental.
 
When I worked in US at a management meeting it was decided to block off four feet in the gents locker room and put a false wall in.
A camera was then put in the false wall.
Two weeks later we were given lists of employees captured on video using drugs or emptying coke cans and filling them with vodka.
The employees were interviews by managers and human resources.
At the time no one was directly fired but offered professional help.
 
When I worked in US at a management meeting it was decided to block off four feet in the gents locker room and put a false wall in.
A camera was then put in the false wall.
Two weeks later we were given lists of employees captured on video using drugs or emptying coke cans and filling them with vodka.
The employees were interviews by managers and human resources.
At the time no one was directly fired but offered professional help.

Probably the case elsewhere in the world ,too. Unfortunately, some people are good workers but have substance problems. I heard a sawmill owner once talk about a guy he had who was on meth. The guy was a faller, and he didn't know what to do, but said he would be up an down hills on foot twice as fast as anyone else, and if you were skidding logs, he'd have three more on the ground for every one you took. If he didn't have his stuff, he didn't even show up to work, and eventually the guy decided he was unsafe (it may not have been meth, but rather whatever a stylish amphetamine was around 30 years ago ,but the guy was hooked).

I have sat in meetings where groups talk about their prescription drug plans as they can see what's getting abused and the insurer will provide them with lists of who. Instead of firing everyone, they try to redesign plans and protocols to prevent it and then work their way down to the managers to get the guys on programs.

No clue what the treatment success rate is, but in the rougher jobs, you can't just fire everyone who has a problem or there'll be nobody to work. You have to try to help them instead, and though it's popular to think that most employers in the US are sharks looking to fire everyone, they're not looking to crush lives if someone can be helped.


....

compare that to my first good job. Aristokraft cabinets. No clue what they did for drugs as I took the test and passed (I don't do drugs or anything questionable, never even an afterthought to me). But, they had a policy - assembly work on lines - nobody can be late or everything is held up. if you are late to clock in twice in a quarter, automatic termination.

I never saw a single person late in the assembly area (about 125 employees) in three full summers between college, and I sure wasn't late either. Lots of older people got to work very early and played cards in the parking lot or shot the breeze as they'd no patience for cutting the time close. Half an hour early on a 15 minute commute wasn't unusual.
 
Back to your question DW:

US news today reports that Opioid and Fentanyl deaths in the US totalled nearly 85000 in the last year -- the level had flattened off as opioid prescription by physicians dipped but now it's rising fast again with illegal fentanyl. I think deaths from Heroin, crack cocaine, crystal meth etc are lower, and not included in the above total.

EDIT Correction: that was a less reliable source -- 2020 Fentanyl/Opiod overdose deaths in USA 61,000, heroin+crack+meth+? overdose deaths 23,000 according to Bloomberg.

The last administration declared war on opioid misuse in its second year of office, but then effectively closed down the department a few months later.

Amongst other groups, very high for ex-military.

In the UK opioid deaths were under 200 last year, with 2000 for heroin and others (not including alcohol or cigarettes). But we have plenty of other problems.

The US seems to have by far the highest death rate from drug overdose for large countries, but it is pretty high in Russia and Iran (Russia also has a huge alcohol death rate).
 
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for perspective:

US deaths from Covid now just under 500,000

US deaths in the many years of Vietnam war I believe about 55,000
 
Back to your question DW:

US news today reports that Opioid and Fentanyl deaths in the US totalled nearly 85000 in the last year -- the level had flattened off as opioid prescription by physicians dipped but now it's rising fast again with illegal fentanyl. I think deaths from Heroin, crack cocaine, crystal meth etc are lower, and not included in the above total.

EDIT Correction: that was a less reliable source -- 2020 Fentanyl/Opiod overdose deaths in USA 61,000, heroin+crack+meth+? overdose deaths 23,000 according to Bloomberg.

The last administration declared war on opioid misuse in its second year of office, but then effectively closed down the department a few months later.

Amongst other groups, very high for ex-military.

In the UK opioid deaths were under 200 last year, with 2000 for heroin and others (not including alcohol or cigarettes). But we have plenty of other problems.

The US seems to have by far the highest death rate from drug overdose for large countries, but it is pretty high in Russia and Iran (Russia also has a huge alcohol death rate).

Yes on the high rate, but as previously shown, it's driven by fentanyl.
 
The opoid epidemic's not a thing here. Doctors in general are way more cautious about prescribing painkillers at all. In most cases you get extra strength ibuprofen or paracetamol (tylenol) or a combo, I've had three surgeries and once it's all I got home, once I got something opoid based to last a few days. They really don't want people to use a lot of pain killers, or prescribe pain killers for issues, the idea is more to see what causes the pain and try and avert it before going that route, it's the like the last option. It's always seemed to me to be a US thing in particular.
 
There are conditions where pain is unavoidable (structural back issues, etc). But the downfall here was the idea that the AMA or something similar got that pain was treatable and we should treat pain like we would treat fever - to eliminate it. That was a stupid idea.

In the early years of opioids, there were accounts of people coming off of disability and going back to work and too many got swept up in the idea that somehow that was permanent with no consequences.
 
I know this is a workshop forum but it's a an important topic raised by DW -- there's a frightening but inspiring USA adoption story on BBC news right now.

One of scary facts coming out of this was a figure of 1 in 15 babies of all babies are being born to mothers who had taken opioids during pregnancy and the fearsome painful withdrawal the baby has to go through after birth.

And then there are the other medications/drugs often taken at the same time.
 
well the Vietnam war benefitted from Donald Trump not being there I suppose.

I get what you're saying (incompetence), but if there's only one thing to give trump credit for here, it's that he ignored mongering from small countries and greatly pulled back our active military conflicts. For that, I am thankful.

He also presided over a system that paid for-profit companies with government money to create the two best vaccines in the world. That caused some controversy here (funding development for companies that would profit after the fact).

I don't, however, miss hearing him talk.
 
And now you have some old geriatric who should be using a zimmer frame to get around and at his time of life should be enjoying retirement. Letting a younger person who has many years of life ahead of him take the reigns would be better for the countries future.
 
And now you have some old geriatric who should be using a zimmer frame to get around and at his time of life should be enjoying retirement. Letting a younger person who has many years of life ahead of him take the reigns would be better for the countries future.

Trump was our 7th inning stretch as far as taking a break from corporatist globalism from both parties. Biden is our 7th inning stretch from fast paced governing now. It's been relatively pleasant recently as long as we don't get fed the BS about how subsidized globalism is for the average person.
 
I do find it funny that there isnt someone younger given a good run at being president....

Back to space x ( ive just caught up with the thread ) musk is thinking long term... sure, theres the moon and mars, but theres also a big asteroid worth far more than the worlds economy ( in rare metals etc ) and i bet you any money ( if ive got it ) that he is prepping for space mining.... i would.... maybe he'll call the first mining ship red dwarf? :ROFLMAO: :LOL:
 
I do find it funny that there isnt someone younger given a good run at being president....

Back to space x ( ive just caught up with the thread ) musk is thinking long term... sure, theres the moon and mars, but theres also a big asteroid worth far more than the worlds economy ( in rare metals etc ) and i bet you any money ( if ive got it ) that he is prepping for space mining.... i would.... maybe he'll call the first mining ship red dwarf? :ROFLMAO: :LOL:
Maybe theyre looking to get closer access to the asteroid belt, which lies on and just beyond Mars
 
Looks like this won't go away.

After clamping down on the drug companies and certain physicians/pharmacies, opioid abuse and death was falling or at least flattening out quite fast in USA, but last year has seen a big rise in numbers again (fentanyl as well as prescription) - especially the death thru overdose..

Seems like the other place with a real problem, and growing fast, is Vancouver area. (Tough, on top of heat deaths and fires this week).

The numbers are still worrying, but far lower, in W Europe, drug abuse/addiction yes, but way fewer deaths..
 
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I wonder how people addicted to opiates/opioids cope with the awful constipation that goes with it.
You don't have to be addicted to it - I take prescription strength co-codomol for arthritis pain (which maybe indicates that Im a geriatric), and as little as possible most of the time because even a small amount of codeine causes me problems. My approach is chocolate, and every Sunday I have a day off the drugs. I know others who do likewise. Maybe we're all just full of s...
 
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