Anyone writing opioid epidemics only happen in the US is either poorly informed or is intellectually dishonest. I assume the second here, since this reads like contemporary agitprop.
This WaPo article[1] has references to UN data sources and says: "United Nations data provide one important benchmark against which to judge how much more or less opioid consumption might be appropriate for a given country. And what it finds about the United States is jaw-dropping: Even when the list is restricted to the top 25 heaviest consuming countries, the United States outpaces them all in opioid use."
So it's within reason for the article to say "[US] people abuse opioids en masse unlike anywhere else in the world"
It's some quirk of how the US handles painkiller prescriptions right? Or something like that. Most opioid addicts in the USA got addicted via their doctor's prescriptions, if I recall correctly.
I found the article to be interesting but the weakest part by far was where he mentioned declining life expectancy as to do with the lack of public health care, and thus unique the USA except for the UK. But wait, the UK has an entirely nationalised healthcare system, it's the literal opposite of the USA. So if the UK is seeing the same thing, that suggests it can't be due to the funding mechanism used. It's more likely that we've hit some sort of life expectancy peak in the most highly developed western nations and if the UK and USA go first, it's very likely that other countries aren't far behind.
> It's more likely that we've hit some sort of life expectancy peak in the most highly developed western nations and if the UK and USA go first, it's very likely that other countries aren't far behind.
Except that the US hasn't reached the peak—life expectancy in other nations is up to 5-10 years higher (depending on gender).
Yeah, but wasn't the highest in Cuba or something like that? There are clearly other tradeoffs involved - probably diet related. If you can eat what you want because you're a rich country, the exact way the health system is run is probably not that big of a deal in comparison.
This data isn't up-to-date and the list is for opiates, not opioids But this still gives you a good sense for which countries to look up. IMO opiates are closer to marijuana or cocaine than to heroin -- i.e., an otherwise healthy, happy, intelligent, and drug-educated person using in a purely recreational context is unlikely to die or even become severely addicted. Different from opioids in that respect.
While I like the friendly notification/explanation, any tool targeting fake news should do a little better in establishing its own credibility. You want to persuade, not block. I'm not sure the dollar amount is enough. We see it in these very comments: show the user a sample of obvious falsehoods they published. This way you could probably come up with a threshold where you just give up.
That's an excellent idea. I wrote the copy on that page trying to convey "can I get your help against these bad people?", rather than something blaming the user, or a scary looking warning.
But showing them the _reason_ why a certain website is blocked can become an opportunity to teach people critical thought, something that other comment threads point out.
All they'd need to do is leak a single email, or even a snippet of a single email that was in the relevant date range but not released, and assert that WL had suppressed it.
FWIW we also saw HRC and her cronies claiming that the recently released emails were doctored. They made this claim straight-faced and it was cryptographically proven to be completely false.
So claims about WL's motivations and actions have thus far not stood up to scrutiny, and our officials have thus far been proven to be dishonest.
Their motivations are irrelevant. Proving politicians are hypocrites is easier than finding metaphors in the bible. Their releases have undeniably been assimilated by one candidate using WL's credibility and flavor of scandal. WL went along with it.
"Troves" don't have signatures. Omissions and context matter. See the ICIJ approach.
