A question about the huge number of obits in our paper lately.

[madfloridian]

Is it just in our central Florida area? I don't have a means to compare with papers because I never noticed before. In our paper, I would estimate that obits have doubled and often tripled in the last few months. Many younger people as well are included, a lot in their 40s and 50s.

It is an alarming rise in our paper. Today there were even more than usual. We were shocked. The rise in the number has been steady now for months, it is not eased off.

Some of us have wondered if it could be hurricane related. We know the stress factor was tremendous. A close neighbor and friend of ours died while the power was out for days after the 3rd eye hit here. He was stressed out.

Also the high winds spread many dangerous substances, such as asbestos from older buildings. No one ever mentions it, but we all know that it happened.

I just wondered if it were a Florida trend, or what. Nothing to be sure about except guesswork. I don't mean this to be depressing or gross, just curious. Wonder if anyone else has noticed such a thing.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Well, around here...

There has been an upsurge of suicide-related mental health callouts for police. Not huge, but noticeable.

Around here, if a person punches out at home, the papers do not cover it.

[madfloridian]

4. Here they do cover a death at home.

It is unreal how many more we have had. We have lost two neighbors since the storm, and one while the power was still out from the 3rd. That is a lot.

[Horse with no Name]

2. Out of curiousity

Are there dairy farms in your area?
The town I grew up in had a large amount of dairies.
There were only 3500 people in the entire town--but people dropped like flies from cancer--my dad included when he was 45.
As an adult I moved to another town in Texas which also had a high percentage of dairy farms and it also had a large amount of deaths from cancer. I think it has something to do with the chemicals that are used on the dairies that get into the bedrock and into the water shelves. Nobody really questions it because that is the bread and butter of the community and they don't want to see that theory proven.
Wonder if other dairy towns have the same problems?

[madfloridian]

3. Not that many of them. Orange groves, phosphate plants.

And the accompanying overflow of gypsum in heavy rains. I know the storms spread the citrus canker, so now they have the law again that enables the state to destroy trees in your yard without permission.

There are a few dairy farms, not many.

[global1]

5. Maybe They Are Finally Burying All Those People/Bodies That Were.....

stored on trucks after the hurricanes. Remember - there was someone going around saying that he'd seen all these bodies hidden on trucks - that there were more deaths from the hurricane's than we were led to believe.

[Lexingtonian]

6. it's normal

From my hospital worker days, there are "dying seasons" of the year associated with relatively large overall changes in temperature and high humidity. December and early January, springtime, and late summer are typical times. People with weakened and relatively unadapting circulatory systems hit the temperature change, get a lung disorder (pneumonia, COPD) or infection that exacerbates things to boot, and they fade away. Periods of unusually high heat and high humidity are very brutal.

Newspapers write obituaries for people who aren't well know, and the criterion seems to be merit- that the person was remarkable in an instructive way or accomplished a great deal relative to his/her peers-. or immediate social importance- i.e. relatively many local people were dependent on him/her.

There is a bit of a larger picture, presently, with so many people of symbolic importance in the past dying in pretty rapid succession. The motif is of an older order and sensibility of the world passing away. The Schiavo business is part and parcel of things...the past year or two have see Reagan depart, the Pope is gone, King Hussein left, King Rainier now too, and the Queen Mother is a centenarian, Margaret Thatcher is a rail and can hardly walk. Nixon died a few years ago, Ray Charles is dead, and Deng Xiaoping- the last real Chinese emperor- is also gone. Andropov and Yeltsin are also getting up there in age, Jimmy Carter is not looking terribly healthy, nor are Walter Mondale or Bush Sr or Nelson Mandela.

An older generation of the world is walking off the stage, the world is in transition to some other condition than the one marked and created/resisted by them, and the combination seems to be mesmerizing a lot of us.