Politics aside, something important appears to be happening in America. Several of the country’s largest categories of preventable death: overdoses, homicides, and traffic fatalities have moved meaningfully downward over the last year and a half. Reasonable people can debate the causes, the timing, and the degree to which these trends began before Donald Trump returned to office. Attribution in complex societies is rarely simple. But the direction of the numbers themselves is difficult to ignore. According to provisional CDC overdose data, America has seen a dramatic reduction in overdose deaths from the catastrophic highs reached during the fentanyl crisis. National crime data and major city reporting have also shown substantial declines in homicide rates. Meanwhile, traffic fatalities have continued to trend downward from the elevated levels seen during and after the pandemic years. Compared to 2023, Back-of-the-napkin math using these national reporting data suggests America is…
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