Opinion: Lifetime risk: a new way to understand deaths from firearms and drug overdoses
Shortly before the coronavirus shuttered schools last spring, I toured a new elementary school in my community in Ohio. But I had a hard time concentrating on the gleaming whiteboards, the new computers, or the cheerfully decorated walls. A new way I had recently devised to put into context deaths from firearms and overdoses kept distracting me.
As I walked through the school, I realized that one child on every floor of the school will likely die from a gunshot and another will die from a drug overdose in the years ahead. If I had been touring a school across the border in West Virginia, one child per classroom will have his or her life ended by an overdose.
