The Impact of Substance Abuse on US Life Expectancy from 2016 to 2021

Abstract

Background: Life expectancy in the US dropped precipitously during what are widely regarded as the worst years of COVID-19 (2020-2021), but the role of the novel virus in this event is disputed because life expectancy was already trending downwards in 2016.
Methods: All data used in the charts was retrieved from the websites of governmental and non-governmental institutions.
Results: Actuarial data from Social Security indicates that the increase in death rate for Americans over 70 never exceeded 20% above its baseline in 2019. Surprisingly, the sharpest increase in the death rate occurred for ages; where it surged 90% over its baseline in 2010.This sharp rise in death rate for the younger ages 30-39 coincides with a sharp rise in drugs overdose deaths, and eight times more Americans ages 30-39 died from drugs than from the novel virus in 2020. Statistical analysis between states indicates an inverse correlation between change in overdose death rate and change in life expectancy (Pearson = -0.655) indicating a 3.5% average reduction in life expectancy in states where overdose deaths increased more than 70% from 2019 to 2021 (p = <0.001).
Conclusions: Substance abuse (mostly opioids) drove almost the entirety of the decline in US life expectancy in 2020 and 2021. The perception that the coronavirus was unusually lethal might be attributed to a demographic transition that increased the population of Americans ages 65-75 by a whopping 40-55% from 2010-2020. Since senior citizens are more vulnerable to respiratory infections, health care facilities would have been challenged with a 40-55% surge in seniors dying from complications of influenza in 2020 and 2021, even in the absence of a novel virus.