Opioid deaths are stable over time, and they don't just suddenly shoot up in August 2021 and fall back down two months later. The spike in deaths during the Delta wave also occurred in elderly people, even though opioid deaths account for a very small part of all deaths in elderly people. And the spike was almost nonexistent in some northeastern states where there was a low number of COVID deaths during the Delta wave: <https://x.com/henjin256/status/2074116951194927259>.
Ages 70 and above had more COVID deaths in 2020 than 2021, but ages below 40 had about 3 times as many COVID deaths in 2021 as 2020, because younger people had a lower vaccination rate than older people. So the spike in deaths during the Delta wave was particularly dramatic in younger people.
