epidemic – Page 6 – Desdemona Despair

Age-adjusted rate of drug overdose deaths in the United States, by sex, 2001–2021. Graphic: Spencer, et al., 2022 / CDC / NCHS

December 30, 2022

Record 106,699 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. in 2021 – Overdose deaths have risen fivefold over the past 2 decades – Mortality rate now 32.4 per 100,000 people

By Merianne Rose Spencer, M.P.H., Arialdi M. Miniño, M.P.H., and Margaret Warner, Ph.D. 21 December 2022 (CDC) – Drug overdose deaths have been rising over the past 2 decades in the United States (1–4). This report uses the most recent data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) to update statistics on deaths from drug […]

Map showing the Rainfall Accumulation Anomaly in the Horn of Africa during the 2010-2011, 2016-2017, and 2020-2022 droughts. Communities in the Horn of Africa are in the midst of a likely fifth consecutive failed rainy season — with the October-December 2022 rains beginning poorly and forecasts indicating they are likely to underperform — and may face a sixth failed season in March-May 2023. The October-December 2020, March-May 2021, October-December 2021 and March-May 2022 seasons were all marred by below-average rainfall, leaving large swathes of Somalia, southern and south-eastern Ethiopia, and northern and eastern Kenya facing the most prolonged drought in recent history, while the March-May 2022 rainy season was the driest on record in the last 70 years. The 2020-2022 drought has now surpassed the horrific droughts in 2010-2011 and 2016-2017 in both duration and severity and will continue to deepen in the months ahead, with catastrophic consequences. Data: USGS FEWS NE (Africa CHIRPS Anomaly 3-Monthly, MAM and OND). Graphic: OCHA

December 23, 2022

UNICEF: More than twenty million children suffering in Horn of Africa as drought intensifies – Two million people displaced internally, 9.5 million livestock dead – “We fled hunger, but hunger followed us here”

NAIROBI, 22 December 2022 (UNICEF) –The number of children suffering dire drought conditions across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia has more than doubled in five months, according to UNICEF. Around 20.2 million children are now facing the threat of severe hunger, thirst and disease, compared to 10 million in July, as climate change, conflict, global inflation, and grain […]

Median real (CPIH-adjusted) hourly employee pay (2022 prices) by cohort in the UK, 1975-2020. Generational pay progress has stalled for those born after 1980. Graphic: Resolution Foundation

December 23, 2022

Intergenerational audit for the UK in 2022 – “Decades of low pay growth, higher housing costs, and high and rising intergenerational wealth inequality means the young entered this crisis with low levels of financial resilience”

14 November 2022 (Resolution Foundation) – Our fourth Intergenerational Audit – part of the ESRC-funded Connecting Generations partnership – provides an analysis of economic living standards across generations in Britain. In so doing, it analyses the latest data across four domains: In each of these domains, we assess how different people of different ages and birth […]

Proportion of climate survey respondents in Norway who expressed they were concerned or unconcerned about climate change, 2017-2021. Respondents ranked how concerned they were about climate change on a scale from 1 to 4. Since 2017, nearly 3000 young people aged 17 to 20 participated in the survey. Graphic: Haugseth, et al., 2022 / Sociology

December 21, 2022

Greta Thunberg effect evident among Norwegian youth – Thunberg says she’s ready to hand over megaphone – “We should also listen to reports and experiences from people who are most affected by the climate crisis”

By Ingebjørg Hestvik 9 December 2022 (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) – Since 2017, nearly 3000 young people aged 17 to 20 have shared in their own words what they consider important in Norwegian society, and whom they regard as good role models. The survey showed a clear shift in Norwegian youth in autumn […]

Photo portrait of economist Nouriel Roubini. Photo: Charlie Bibby / Financial Times

December 20, 2022

Financial Times interview with economist Nouriel Roubini, aka “Dr. Doom” – “I think that really the world is on a slow-motion train wreck”

By Henry Mance 18 December 2022 (Financial Times) – Nouriel Roubini is gloomy, and it’s not just that he arrived in London on a red-eye flight and couldn’t get a table at Nobu. It’s not even conventional economic worries. It’s everything: a confluence of problems, old and new. “I think that really the world is […]

A family in Sujawal district, Sindh province of Pakistan look out at their flooded home which was submerged by the devastating 2022 floods in the country. Photo: Turkish Red Crescent

December 17, 2022

Pakistan floods: Six months on, humanitarian needs remain dire – “Massive needs require massive support”

By Angbeen Sohail 13 December 2022 (IFRC) – It’s been almost six months since flash floods battered parts of Pakistan, and hundreds of thousands of people are still reeling from the floods’ effects. Homes, livelihoods, and farmlands were destroyed and many parts of the country remain underwater. An estimated 33 million people have been affected, […]

Ryan Smith, a 36-year-old homeless addict, falls asleep after smoking fentanyl in Los Angeles, Thursday, 18 August 2022. Nearly 2,000 homeless people died in the city from April 2020 to March 2021, a 56 percent increase from the previous year, according to a report released by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. Overdose was the leading cause of death, killing more than 700. Photo: Jae C. Hong / AP Photo

December 5, 2022

Fentanyl’s scourge plainly visible on streets of Los Angeles

By Jae C. Hong and Brian Melley 28 November 2022 LOS ANGELES (AP) – In a filthy alley behind a Los Angeles doughnut shop, Ryan Smith convulsed in the grips of a fentanyl high — lurching from moments of slumber to bouts of violent shivering on a warm summer day. When Brandice Josey, another homeless […]

60-year-old Abdullahi Hassan watches over four of his grandchildren in a shelter where he and his family of eight lives and sleep in November 2022. The shelter is located in a camp for the displaced on the outskirts of Luuq, Somalia. They had been at the camp for two weeks, having left home when rain didn't come and all their livestock was wiped out. Photo: Lily Martin / CBC

December 5, 2022

From Ukraine to Yemen, UN seeks record $51.5 billion for “shockingly high” aid needs – “The humanitarian response system is being tested to its limits”

By Emma Farge 1 December 2022 GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations and partners on Thursday appealed for a record $51.5 billion in aid money for 2023, with tens of millions of additional people expected to need assistance, testing the humanitarian response system “to its limits”. The appeal represents a 25% increase on 2022 and […]

Number of U.S. dollar billionaires in China, 1999-2022. The year 2022 saw the biggest fall in the Hurun China Rich List in the 24 years of its existence. Data: Hurun Research Institute. Graphic: James P. Galasyn

November 20, 2022

China’s superrich decimated as economic downturn wipes out billions – “This year has seen the biggest fall in the Hurun China Rich List of the last 24 years”

By John Feng 8 November 2022 (Newsweek) – China’s wealthy lost hundreds of billions of dollars in 2022 as the global economic downturn also shook up the country’s typically high-growth industries, according to an annual rich list published on Tuesday. The number of Chinese entrepreneurs worth 5 billion Chinese yuan ($710 million) or more on September 15 […]

Components of the global carbon budget and their uncertainties, 1960-2021 and projected to 2022. Components are presented individually for (a) fossil CO2 and cement carbonation emissions (EFOS), (b) growth rate in atmospheric CO2 concentration (GATM), (c) emissions from land-use change (ELUC), (d) the land CO2 sink (SLAND), (e) the ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN), and (f) the budget imbalance that is not accounted for by the other terms. Positive values of SLAND and SOCEAN represent a flux from the atmosphere to land or the ocean. All data are in GtC yr−1 with the uncertainty bounds representing ±1 standard deviation in shaded colour. Data sources are as in Fig. 3. The red dots indicate our projections for the year 2022, and the red error bars the uncertainty in the projections. Graphic: Friedlingstein, et al., 2022 / Earth System Science Data

November 19, 2022

Global Carbon Budget 2022: Global carbon emissions in 2022 remain at record levels – No sign of decrease in global CO2 emissions – “This year we see yet another rise in global fossil CO2 emissions, when we need a rapid decline”

11 November 2022 (Global Carbon Project) – Global carbon emissions in 2022 remain at record levels – with no sign of the decrease that is urgently needed to limit warming to 1.5°C, according to the Global Carbon Project science team (Global Carbon Budget 2022). If current emissions levels persist, there is now a 50% chance […]