In a recent post I wrote about the movie Asphalt City and how many of the calls were reminiscent of my own. The only exception being when there was an asthmatic trapped in a burning house, I never went into the house to intubate the patient, I waited for fire (in full gear with respirators)…
Last night, I watched Asphalt City, a movie about paramedics in New York City starring Sean Penn as a burnt out medic with a failed family life and Tye Sheriden as the young rookie medic studying at night for his medical school entrance exams. The movie is based on the novel Black Flies by Shannon…
Irked. The headline Irked me. Alzheimer’s Mortality Lowest for Taxi, Ambulance Drivers Some researchers out of Harvard Medical School did a study of over 443 occupations and found that taxi drivers and ambulance drivers had the lowest rates of dying from Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers: population based cross sectional study…
In October of 2023, there were curious headlines out of Mexico that the Sinaola Cartel was getting out of the fentanyl business. Mexican Sinaloa Cartel’s Message to Members: Stop Making Fentanyl or Die blared the headline in the Wall Street Journal expose. According to the report, this written warning appeared throughout Sinaloa: “In Sinaloa, the…
Fatal Overdoses continue to plummet nationwide. The latest CDC 12-month rolling fatal overdose averages through July 2024 are out today and they show the fatal overdoses in the USA are down 19.4% from their August 2023 rolling 12-month high. Here in Connecticut, fatal overdoses are down 26.8% from our November 2021 high. The USA overdose…
Connecticut reached its 12-month rolling fatal overdose peak in November 2021. As of June 2024, overdoses are down 24.14%. This data comes from the CDC Vital Statistics web page that tracks overdoses in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. At the end of this post is the CDC’s list of states and the…
Why are overdoses fatalities dropping? There has been much speculation and the answer probably doesn’t lie with one factor but with many, including increased availability of naloxone, the efforts of harm reduction workers, the end of the COVID isolation, the trend away from injecting to snorting or smoking, a less toxic drug supply, and expanded…