my own hunch is twofold: (1) that addicts are sick all of the time anyways and may have had other reasons to avoid the er and (2) that the spike in opioid deaths over the last months might be evidence of some kind of interaction of the virus with the tolerance levels of opioid addicts.
vancouver is indeed a very wealthy, educated city, but it does have this impoverished underbelly as well. my understanding when i was there is that the city is almost designed to prevent that educated part of the city from interacting with the impoverished underbelly - which may work out to the latter's benefit in a scenario where a pathogen is introduced into the region largely via outside travel, at least to start. education breeds it's own sort of herd immunity, in that way, because let's be real - this thing is stopped pretty easily with basic hygiene.
so, yeah, there's lots of poor people in vancouver, too, but the character of the city is very well-to-do, and that is an increasing phenomenon. i'm interested in the results, but i stand by my statement.