<story><title>Last year, more people in San Francisco died of overdoses than of Covid-19</title><url>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/05/15/last-year-more-people-in-san-francisco-died-of-overdoses-than-of-covid-19</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>baby</author><text>I live here and to anyone who doesn’t know san francisco this might help explain why I am not surprised (and probably anyone living here isn’t as well):&lt;p&gt;- Everybody wears a mask here. Everyone. Even vaccinated people and children. It’s taken extremely seriously. And I’m not even talking about social distancing. Everything has been closed since the beginning of the virus and indoor dining is merely re-opening.&lt;p&gt;- san francisco has the largest homeless population I’ve seen in the world (and I’ve traveled and lived in a bit everywhere in the world including many poor countries). On top of that, drug is hitting homeless people hard. It’s extremely common to see someone shooting themselves with a syringe here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>awb</author><text>I don’t know what’s going on here either with masks.&lt;p&gt;30-50 year old adults outside, alone, in direct sunlight, exercising, dozens of feet away from anyone else are still wearing masks. No doubt they’re fully vaccinated by now as well.&lt;p&gt;And multiple times a day you see people driving alone in cars wearing masks.&lt;p&gt;Just the other week, we overheard a young girl commenting on a woman not wearing a mask, “she’s a bad person, isn’t she mommy?” “No, she’s not a bad person, just inconsiderate”, the mother replied. This was in response to a fully vaccinated adult walking in a state park alone, in broad daylight, 3-4x father away than social distancing guidelines require.&lt;p&gt;I’m glad we took COVID seriously here earlier and longer than most states, but now that several states are reporting 0 deaths and vaccination rates are climbing the fear of an explosion of cases should hopefully be subsiding.&lt;p&gt;In the beginning comparing mental health to a potentially uncontrolled global pandemic I think was a serious misunderstanding of how exponential growth works, but now that the pandemic is getting under control it makes sense to weigh mental health more heavily.</text></comment>
<story><title>Last year, more people in San Francisco died of overdoses than of Covid-19</title><url>https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/05/15/last-year-more-people-in-san-francisco-died-of-overdoses-than-of-covid-19</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>baby</author><text>I live here and to anyone who doesn’t know san francisco this might help explain why I am not surprised (and probably anyone living here isn’t as well):&lt;p&gt;- Everybody wears a mask here. Everyone. Even vaccinated people and children. It’s taken extremely seriously. And I’m not even talking about social distancing. Everything has been closed since the beginning of the virus and indoor dining is merely re-opening.&lt;p&gt;- san francisco has the largest homeless population I’ve seen in the world (and I’ve traveled and lived in a bit everywhere in the world including many poor countries). On top of that, drug is hitting homeless people hard. It’s extremely common to see someone shooting themselves with a syringe here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>StavrosK</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know about SF specifically, but according to [1], California is doing about average for the US and is at the world&amp;#x27;s top 30 (higher is worse) for deaths per million, so I&amp;#x27;d guess it&amp;#x27;s more #2 than #1.&lt;p&gt;Is SF doing significantly better than the rest of California, in general? Hopefully now enough people are vaccinated that the rates have dropped.</text></comment>