I love the Senior Voice. However, I have a question regarding the January 2017 edition, page 25 statement: “The opioid crisis has hit nearly every corner of the country, with nearly 80 million Americans dying every day from heroin or opioid overdoses.” Google reports that the 2017 population count for the United States is 325,482,678 people. With 80 million of them dying every day due to heroin or opioid overdoses, the United States will run out of living people in five days approximately. We will be burning towers of dead Americans from overdoses. I challenge this statement. Care to comment?
Barbara Reilly, Anchorage
Editor’s note: The sentence should have read: “From 2000 to 2015 more than half a million people died from drug overdoses. 91 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control.” The story was from our syndicated service, Senior Wire, which we have found to be a valuable, reliable source over many years. When I emailed Barbara that her sharp eye caught an error that slipped past numerous other editors around the country, she replied: “I wrote chemical reports for 15 to 20 years, five columns of 4 to 6 digit figures, 33 lines per page. One report was 68 pages. The project manager told me I had a decimal error on page 38 (the only error). Some people’s kids!”
Thanks, Barbara, for the catch. And the laugh.
