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Daily Bread for 8.7.24: Opioids Still a Top Wisconsin Concern

Good morning.

Wednesday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:54, and sunset is 8:08, for 14h 12m 31s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 8.9 percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets at 6 PM.

On this day in 1947, Thor Heyerdahl‘s balsa wood raft, the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America


Christine Durrance, a professor in the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, writes Wisconsin’s opioid crisis complicates an already troubled health care system (‘54% of respondents in UW-Madison survey report health care as quite or an extremely big problem for Wisconsin; 69% feel this way about health care being a problem for the country’):

Health care is the third most concerning issue during this presidential election year, according to WisconSays survey data collected as part of this year’s Main Street Agenda, which the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW-Madison is using to highlight what matters to Wisconsin throughout 2024.

In this statewide representative survey, 54% of respondents report health care as quite or an extremely big problem for Wisconsin; 69% feel this way about health care being a problem for the country. These sentiments are felt across the state with 58% of Democrats and 54% of Republicans viewing it as quite a problem or an extremely big problem for the state. There is also little divide between urban (54%) and rural (53%) residents.

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In 2022, more than 80,000 Americans died from opioids. It was the most deaths in a year due to the drug, and roughly four times the number of deaths attributed to opioids just a decade earlier. Nearly 1,500 Wisconsinites lost their lives to opioids in 2022, almost 20% more than just two years prior.  

The effects of the epidemic on our communities and health care system reach far beyond overdose mortality. One understudied aspect of the opioid crisis is its impact on women, infants, and children.

A hundred culture-war issues, pushed relentlessly, have only distracted from, but not alleviated, tens of thousands of yearly tragedies.

See also Society of Actuaries: Economic Cost of the Opioid Crisis.


Firefighters rescue deer on UW-Stevens Point campus:

Around 11 a.m. first responders were called to the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Pointr construction in Lot J.

Crews were able to restrain, secure, and free the deer from its predicament. 

Daily Bread for 3.21.23: Libertarians, Bleeding-Heart Libertarians, and All that Lies Beyond

Good morning. Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 52. Sunrise is 6:54 AM and sunset 7:08 PM for 12h 13m 53s of daytime. The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.  The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.   On this day in 1952, Alan Freed presents the…

Daily Bread for 3.3.23: When Neither Sympathy Nor Empathy Are Present

Good morning. Friday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 41. Sunrise is 6:25 AM and sunset 5:47 PM for 11h 21m 28s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 85.8% of its visible disk illuminated.  On this day in 1931, the United States adopts The Star-Spangled Banner as its national…

Daily Bread for 3.2.23: The Late Pete Carril’s Approach Applied to Whitewater’s Politics

Good morning. Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 39. Sunrise is 6:27 AM and sunset 5:46 PM for 11h 18m 34s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 79.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission will meet at 6 PM and there will be a Whitewater Aquatic and Fitness…

Daily Bread for 4.4.22: The Populists Circle Disney (Yes, Disney)

Good morning. Monday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of 49.  Sunrise is 6:29 AM and sunset 7:25 PM for 12h 55m 16s of daytime.  The moon is a waxing crescent with 10.4% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Equal Opportunities Commission meets at 5 PM. On this day in 1865, a day after…