US Life Expectancy Falls Again In 'Historic' Setback (nytimes.com) 289
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The average life expectancy of Americans fell precipitously in 2020 and 2021, the sharpest two-year decline in nearly 100 years and a stark reminder of the toll exacted on the nation by the continuing coronavirus pandemic. In 2021, the average American could expect to live until the age of 76, federal health researchers reported on Wednesday. The figure represents a loss of almost three years since 2019, when Americans could expect to live, on average, nearly 79 years. The reduction has been particularly steep among Native Americans and Alaska Natives, the National Center for Health Statistics reported. Average life expectancy in those groups was shortened by four years in 2020 alone. The cumulative decline since the pandemic started, more than six and a half years on average, has brought life expectancy to 65 among Native Americans and Alaska Natives -- on par with the figure for all Americans in 1944. In 2021, the shortening of life span was more pronounced among white Americans than among Black Americans, who saw greater reductions in the first year of the pandemic.
White Americans saw the second-largest decline in average life expectancy in 2021, a drop of one year, to 76.4 in 2021 from 77.4 in 2020. The decline was steeper than that among Black Americans, at seven-tenths of a year. That was followed by Hispanic Americans, whose life expectancy dropped only two-tenths of a year in 2021. But both Black and Hispanic Americans were hit hard in 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Average life expectancy for Hispanic Americans fell by four years, to 77.9 from 81.9 in 2019. The figure for Black Americans declined almost as much, by more than three years to 71.5 years in 2020. White Americans experienced the smallest decline during the first year of the pandemic, a drop of 1.4 years to 77.4 from 78.8. For white and Black Americans, life expectancy is now the lowest it has been since 1995, federal researchers said. Asian Americans held the highest life expectancy among racial and ethnic groups included in the new analysis: 83.5 years, on average. The figure fell only slightly last year, from 83.6 in 2020. Americans suffer from what experts have called "the U.S. health disadvantage," an amalgam of influences that erode well-being, Dr. Woolf said. "These include a fragmented, profit-driven health care system; poor diet and a lack of physical activity; and pervasive risk factors such as smoking, widespread access to guns, poverty and pollution," says the report.
"The result is a high disease burden among Americans, and shorter life expectancy compared with that in comparable high-income nations over the last two decades."
White Americans saw the second-largest decline in average life expectancy in 2021, a drop of one year, to 76.4 in 2021 from 77.4 in 2020. The decline was steeper than that among Black Americans, at seven-tenths of a year. That was followed by Hispanic Americans, whose life expectancy dropped only two-tenths of a year in 2021. But both Black and Hispanic Americans were hit hard in 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Average life expectancy for Hispanic Americans fell by four years, to 77.9 from 81.9 in 2019. The figure for Black Americans declined almost as much, by more than three years to 71.5 years in 2020. White Americans experienced the smallest decline during the first year of the pandemic, a drop of 1.4 years to 77.4 from 78.8. For white and Black Americans, life expectancy is now the lowest it has been since 1995, federal researchers said. Asian Americans held the highest life expectancy among racial and ethnic groups included in the new analysis: 83.5 years, on average. The figure fell only slightly last year, from 83.6 in 2020. Americans suffer from what experts have called "the U.S. health disadvantage," an amalgam of influences that erode well-being, Dr. Woolf said. "These include a fragmented, profit-driven health care system; poor diet and a lack of physical activity; and pervasive risk factors such as smoking, widespread access to guns, poverty and pollution," says the report.
"The result is a high disease burden among Americans, and shorter life expectancy compared with that in comparable high-income nations over the last two decades."
Stroke, Suicide, Injuries, Stress (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Stroke, Suicide, Injuries, Stress, Moderna, Ast (Score:5, Funny)
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Would you care to list the other proposed symptoms of the shot
I dunno about you, but I got a free pass for unlimited transport on the Lizard People UFO Network.
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Not to mention my new awesome Magneto powers.
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I'm still trying to figure out how this 5g app works so I can input the activation code!!
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Move closer to your nearest 5G tower, it may take a while to take hold.
Maybe get another booster, too.
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What's your guess as to the reason for increase in [thought miscarriages]
The people from AM radio moved to podcasts, and you ingested too much.
Re:Stroke, Suicide, Injuries, Stress, Moderna, Ast (Score:5, Informative)
There was no increase in miscarriages. There was one article that claimed there was. They got that number by adding up totals from several tables that showed different data sets. Most pregnancies showed up in multiple tables, so they got double counted. The article was later updated to state that the data was wrong.
Every study on the issue has shown no change in miscarriage rates.
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That is likely to change now that many states are taking away abortion rights.
Re:Stroke, Suicide, Injuries, Stress, Moderna, Ast (Score:5, Insightful)
The ban means that not only will women not be able to terminate dangerous pregnancies in some cases, but it also discourages them from seeking healthcare at all when pregnant. Visiting a clinic could reduce their options, or get them into legal trouble if they miscarry or decide to get an abortion. It will also push some of them towards unsafe abortions, that can result in being unable to have children later or death.
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The ban means that not only will women not be able to terminate dangerous pregnancies in some cases...
Horseshit. Show me which abortion ban doesn't include an exception to physical risk to the mother's life. Name one. Be specific. I want links. Details.
... but it also discourages them from seeking healthcare at all when pregnant.
What? That's moronic.
Visiting a clinic could reduce their options, or get them into legal trouble if they miscarry or decide to get an abortion.
Again, what the fuck are you talking about?
One, the whole "they'll jail you for a miscarriage" is pure bullshit. Who is going to these women and asking for proof that it was a miscarriage and not an abortion, under legal threat? Again, no MSNBC bullshit. Be specific.
And "if they decide to get an abortion", they can't be arrested or prosec
Re:Stroke, Suicide, Injuries, Stress, Moderna, Ast (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you ever had sex (real question) or do you wear your "Virginity Rocks" T-shirt?
Herpes is a much scarier sexual outcome than pregnancy. Prior to antibiotics, Syphilis was a terribly disfiguring disease with lifelong consequences. I could probably list a dozen more. People still had sex.
Abortion restrictions are not going to change sexual behavior. They aren't going to reduce abortions. They are just going to reduce women's health. And they will likely be used as a tool of racism (as has happened everywhere else they've been implemented). We know this not from speculation but from looking at places that have tried.
Did you make this stuff up or is there actually somebody out there with an audience say this?
But what you're really talking about here is a war on sex?
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Looks like somebody hasn't read the works of Margaret Sanger otherwise they'd know that pro-abortion team has also been used as tool for racism. It's almost like if tools can be abused by bad people, they will.
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I do believe the abortion rate in Texas has fallen since their legislation. Do you have a citation that shows the abortion rate in Texas hasn't been reduced?
Is there any reason why we should terminate pregnancies by killing the viable baby, rather than just delivering it to end the pregnancy and then giving it up for adoption? Why not protect the health of the woman who wants to stop being pregnant, and protect the health of the baby who can live outside the womb, even if the pregnancy isn't going to full
Re:Stroke, Suicide, Injuries, Stress, Moderna, Ast (Score:5, Informative)
https://jamanetwork.com/journa... [jamanetwork.com]
Really? Just a random blogger. No.
Sorry but check that out and think about it.
I have to ask, what exactly do you think this study demonstrates?
Never mind, that was a rhetorical question. For someone with your username it's particularly ironic that you seem to have missed the conclusion that there was no increase of spontaneous abortions following vaccination: "Spontaneous abortions did not have an increased odds of exposure to a COVID-19 vaccination in the prior 28 days compared with ongoing pregnancies (adjusted odds ratio, 1.02; 95% CI, 0.96-1.08)."
If you'd like to suggest otherwise you're going to need another source to support that claim.
Re:Stroke, Suicide, Injuries, Stress, Moderna, Ast (Score:5, Informative)
The poster is a troll and is using a very common troll-tactic, which is to post a link that does not support the claim made with the knowledge that most people will not bother to follow and read the link to discover that it does not support the claim at all, and be mislead. In many cases, like this one, the topic is addressed in the link but actually refutes the claim, since it is false (sometimes the link is merely irrelevant.
This is one poster who, based on their posting history, can be assumed to be lying.
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That people would reach for any grasp if they need to get rid of a parasite and are not allowed to anymore.
Re:Stroke, Suicide, Injuries, Stress, Moderna, Ast (Score:5, Informative)
Because that stat came from known huckster Naomi Wolf who has deleted that blog post with the stat everyone is running with because she made the hilarious error of counting the number twice because it was in two tables but it was the same data.
And even after the total number of miscarriages was actually half the reported number it was neglected to mention that the even smaller number was combined for both vaccine and placebo.
So when you add it all together you actually have the placebo and vaccine groups showed rates very similar and both within the known rate of miscarriages in general which is about 20%.
COVID-19 Vaccination Doesn’t Increase Miscarriage Risk, Contrary to Naomi Wolf’s Spurious Stat [factcheck.org]
Cue someone saying FactCheck is biased and a bunch of establishment cucks but please post your own data before you go tossing that old classic around.
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Re:Stroke, Suicide, Injuries, Stress, Moderna, Ast (Score:4, Informative)
First, your link does not work.
Second, here is a list of studies of CV19 studies on pregnancies, yes there were not women explicity tested in the initial trial that was made known back when shots were first started rolling out and many studies have done explicity that since then. It's not as though they do one trial and stop you know, this has been known since Dec 2020:
COVID-19 vaccine safety in pregancy - table of studies [google.com]
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It could be a coincidence. What do you believe?
It could also be the 5G WiFi. They were installing a lot of it around that time and we know it kills bees.
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Don't believe the data on miscarriages - they're a russian psyop to stop big pharma companies from helping the world with their perfectly safe and effective vaccines. The russians want us to stop trusting our trusted sources of news, and any time you cast doubt on the narrative, you're helping kill ukranian babies.
Brought to you by Pfizer.
Won't improve (Score:5, Insightful)
we pay for the rest of the world to drug price cap (Score:2, Troll)
we pay for the rest of the world to drug price cap's
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And we will continue to pay until we decide to stop being a punching bag and implement price caps of our own.
Nice try (Score:4, Insightful)
US life expectancy rose dramatically while the US had for-profit healthcare, and the rate of the rise has reduced as government involvement in healthcare has increased. At his point, with Obamacare in place, government is fully involved in all US healthcare with government control over the types of health policies that can be bought, how much they can cost, and when they can be bought. Certainly nobody can argue with a straight face that the US healthcare system has been free of government intervention over the past two years as life expectancy has taken a huge hit. ("free" vaccines, "free" masks, "free" test kits, lockdowns, vax and mask mandates, [anti]social-distancing, CDC and NIH driven COVID policies, billions of dollars pipelined into vaccine companies, billions of tax dollars poured into hospitals and morgues for handling COVID patients/victims, government payouts to companies as their employees stay home for health reasons, etc)
This is the point at which somebody always pops up with the line "healthcare is a human right"... which seems right when analyzed at the level of a four-year-old child but is obviously false; "human rights" cannot require the labor of other people. My natural right to free speech does not require anybody else to do anything. My right to self defense, my right to religious freedom [the right to think and believe what I want], my right to not self-incriminate, my right to not be unreasonably searched, etc do not require any other person to provide anything. Healthcare is VERY different - it requires human labor (the work of a doctor, nurse, pharmacologist, etc) and probably equipment/supplies (which required people to obtain and process raw materials and then make and transport the results). These things cannot, by definition, be "free" - SOMEBODY must do labor to obtain them. If those providers must provide them at no cost, then they must be slaves (hardly a "human right") and if THEY are not slaves and will be paid then SOMEBODY else will have to be forced to work to provide the money - thus making THOSE people into slaves, providing they are not being compensated.
We might all want healthcare to be universally provided, and we might all agree that society should provide it and should spread the costs broadly - and make them some sort of right of citizenship, or societal right, etc but this is not the same thing as a "human right" (sometimes referred to as a "natural right" or a "God-given right"). These distinctions matter, because they help shape the policies implemented.
Re: Fentanyl (Score:5, Insightful)
We are always looking for an enemy, from south of the border, or with a really friendly disposition, but with a french accent, or from across he Pacific, or across the Atlantic, or from the middle of desert that sits on another continent, or an imaginary friend that somehow only our leaders can see, but no one else can.
We act like children, blaming others for the trouble we cause. We need to start taking care of our homeless and sick people. We need to stop indiscriminately prescribing whatever shit the pharma industry is currently promoting, without first weighting in on the pros vs cons and the possible consequences. We need to provide job security and a fair wage to people, so that crime will slowly go down. Doing those things will prevent or take care of a lot of issues with violence, drugs, alcohol, physical, and mental health.
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We need to provide job security and a fair wage to people, so that crime will slowly go down.
We use almost twice as much of the planet's resources as is sustainable every year. We need to provide rent control, UBI and health care to people, so that they don't have to do as much work to survive. The planet literally will not support this make-work bullshit.
Re:Fentanyl (Score:5, Informative)
About 80% of the fentanyl in this country is walked across the Southern border. ... This post will get modded down, because securing our Southern border is against the leftist narrative, despite having enormous social benefits.
No, if your post gets modded down it'll be because it's factually incorrect. A bit more than half the fentanyl coming into the US now comes out of Mexico, and it mostly comes in via truck. You know, along with the cheap vegetables and fruits everyone likes to buy. We could certainly inspect those trucks more closely at the border, but that'd cost more money and likely raise the cost of the aforementioned produce.
Fentanyl used to mostly come straight from China. It still does, but via the Mexican cartels rather than directly.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/fent... [go.com]
Re:Fentanyl (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt anyone, even leftists, maybe even the imaginary leftists you think are, would disagree with the idea of reducing the amount of fentanyl overdoses in the US. What I would oppose is the use of the fentanyl problem to backdoor more wasteful, inefficent and somtimes cruel border policies in the name of "securing" the border, or thinking a wall will help. If we haven't been able to stop the smuggling of marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines and every other illicit substance from getting in the country for the last 70 years why would fentanyl be any different? Why in this case is the right-wing answer more government spending and bigger federal agencies?
The more revealing question is why are do many Americans have additctions to fantanyl and other pain killers? I would chalk up a not insignificant amount of that to our healthcare system and in general poverty which leads to crushing stress which feeds into drug abuse, two problems that are best solved with public and social programs but that is against the right wing narrative.
On the other hand I would absolutely build a border wall or double the CBP budget if it meant we could come to a compromise and have a multi-payer universal healthcare system at long last in this country, but I can't help but feel like this pivot to fentanyl and the border is a way to avoid coming to terms to fixing the actual root causes of the social ills causing the drug problem in the first place.
Re:Fentanyl (Score:5, Insightful)
Well you're talking bullshit.
It's about how you asset sovereignty. Separating kind from parents them losing the paperwork and effectively orphaning then is a particularly cruel way of assessing sovereignty.
It's not uncruel simply because you don't give a shit about how it's done.
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What's also cruel is dehumanizing asylum seekers who come to our country and calling them 'illegals' when, in fact, they've done nothing illegal! It's illegal for economic migrants to cross the border without documentation but it's absolutely legal for asylum seekers to do so.
We have a declini
Re:Fentanyl (Score:5, Interesting)
We could get back to pre-Covid life expectancy simply by securing the Southern border
A multi-billion dollar trade and you think the solution is "oh we just need to put some guards at the border". Good luck with that. It's a supply and demand thing, the answer is to address the demand and not by locking addicts into prisons for slave labor. You will never win just putting guns at a wall, I think the last two wars we so "won" would be evidence of how awesome our ability to fight things truly is.
You know what, whatever, toss a bazillion dollars at it. The profit motive is so high, cartels will throw millions of human bodies at the problem. Shit, South America is literally giving the cartels thousands upon thousands of new recruits everyday. How many new recruits is USBP pulling in per year? The cartels are making enough money to bomb a section of wall everyday for the next thousand years, our Congress can't even agree to lunch. And when the Republicans who want to solve this issue were in charge, what happened?
I'm so tired of this vague "secure the border" bullshit when nobody has any answer to how to best go about that, and even if we did, nobody wants to fund it till the next century that it requires.
is against the leftist narrative
And this is why no solution will ever be made and you especially shouldn't be looking for one from the Government, I mean shame on you expecting the Government to do something. Because people want to play party, people want their Superbowl team in Congress to win, and when they win, what? Nothing gets done. The supply isn't ever being cut off, because sending people to prison for drugs is a great solution to sectors of the economy that needs cheap/free labor. Millions more in the United States will just have to die because we won't give them help. We don't help addiction, we have stigmas that surround drug use, we do nothing to address the most venerable groups in this nation. We are not going to do anything. Because we're all just going to blame the "bad people" who bring drugs into this country instead of address Why do you think so many people are using drugs? They taste good you think?
You know what? Whatever, go build your little wall that cartels can easily break, go put your agents that can be easily shot, go put your cameras and e-fences that can easily be cut. And after we've spent some significant part of the national GDP on useless solutions, after a million more people have died, and after large sums of United States currency has forever slipped into cartel hands to fuel their machine more, perhaps, just maybe, someone will stop and say "maybe we should help drug users?"
But I don't attribute the United States to be so clever. I mean hell, look how long they stayed in Afghanistan and look at how great the endgame was. Sure let's go for war on drugs part two electric bugaloo. I'm sure will get a different result this time.
What good is seizing it at the border? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ever get serious about drug addiction and overdoses we here on the left are right here waiting for you. The first step is full legalization so that drug addiction can be treated as a medical condition. The next step is a universal healthcare system like Medicare for all so that individuals are seeking proper medical Care instead of taking illegal drugs for pain killing. Also universal paid time off and sick leave. Nobody gave a rat's ass about drug overdoses when it was black inner city youths. It became a problem when it was Blue collar white guys. And that became a problem when the economy went to shit because we broke the unions and they started taking drugs to work through the pain of the injuries they'd incurred.
So if you ever actually want to solve the problem that's causing fentanyl overdoses instead of taking out your frustrations on the people of Mexico and South America we here on the left have had the answers and the date of the back them up for about 20 years now and we've been waiting for you to come around to it. As the saying goes fax don't care about your feelings.
Re:Fentanyl (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm. Apparently Germany has smarter junkies than the US. Germany uses more Fenta than the US [statista.com] but has far fewer overdose deaths [cnn.com].
Wonder what the reason could be.
you are short sighted (Score:5, Interesting)
Why people do you think people use all those drugs ? After all even in EU there are drug issues, and the EU frontier are even more a sieve than the US one, yet fentanyl overdoses and fentanyl usage does not seem to be such a problem here, and before you start saying the countries around EU don't produce it , the largest quantity of it being produced by China and India, it is only secondary countries to which China export to which it is smuggled from.
When you did down why people use opioid you see some surprising trend. In the US a non negligible quantity of them do it, because they started during a health care problem : pain management. And that is where you immediately see the health care angle. The US health care , is not an HC of outcome, but rather an HC of process : the whole process is engineered to get as much money as it can, and thus the fentanyl epidemic started with the Sackler family and purdueattempt to earn as much money as possible, and touted the advantage of opioid to doctor, incentivizing over prescription. The same cannot be said of most EU HC which are an HC of outcome mostly : public fond are directed toward a positive outcome for patient , rather than a profitable one. Thus there are far less incentive of over prescription of opioid. That is enough a difference to explain the opioid crisis in the US which did not really happen in EU in comparison. Yes sure there opoiod abuse in EU, but let us compare my country to the US : there are 3 per 1000 opioid abuser (Germany - https://www.cato.org/blog/data... [cato.org]) the US 30 per 1000 roughly (https://www.hhs.gov/opioids/about-the-epidemic/opioid-crisis-statistics/index.html).
And ehre we come again. The reason ultimately for the opioid crisis can be traced to your crappy Health care system. Lefgt/rigtht politic be damned. Once you introduce for profit in a service, the service will be rendered worst to increase the profit of the investor. That the US need so much time to learn that is incredibly sad.
Re: you are short sighted (Score:2)
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Improving the medical system in the United States won't cause people to stop abusing fentanyl.
He summary was political (Score:2)
They had to throw in "profit-driven health care system" and "widespread access to guns" as reasons our life expectancy is so short.
Well, according to the CDC [cdc.gov], the top causes of death are Heart disease, Cancer, COVID-19, Accidents (unintentional injuries), Stroke, Chronic lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, Diabetes, Influenza and pneumonia, Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis.
Almost all of these are caused by people refusing to take care of themselves, and insisting on living un
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You are committing a grave sin by using facts to counter the mainstream narrative. Your reckless use of logic, reason, and facts is helping russians control our gas prices.
Please stop your harmful actions that might cause others to doubt the current thing - doubt is a weapon of the enemy.
Brought to you by Pfizer
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About 80% of the fentanyl in this country is walked across the Southern border.
We could get back to pre-Covid life expectancy simply by securing the Southern border,
Right, because the narcos wouldn't find any other way to get it in.
How much would securing the border cost, btw? I mean absolutely watertight against drugs but still allowing the valid people through.
Maybe that money could be better spent than trying to stop people taking drugs, because they'll still do it anyway.
Re:Fentanyl (Score:5, Insightful)
If we fix healthcare and fix a broken employment culture (practically no vacation, lots of underpaid overtime, fired at the drop of a hat, demanding a degree for jobs that could be done by a middle school kid), we would reduce actual desire to use opioids that eventually leads to fentanyl and death.
Fix the social safety net and people may quit using opioids as a crutch to let them keep going to work when what they need as time to recover from illness and injury.
Consider how crappy things have to be for someone to make opioid addiction look like the better option.
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where did you get those bs numbers? first of all, the cdc is generally a couple years behind on death reporting. secondly, the estimates for 2021 (because again, no actual data given from the cdc) say that there were less than 100k total overdoses. 14% of which are fentanyl.
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That was more-or-less the point of his obviously-not-serious post.
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The result of eating too little is osteopenia. You see this in 50% of the population over 40. Even if somebody manages to maintain weight by starving themselves, they will then get an osteopenia-related stress fracture, end up in an expensive ECV, and then get diabetes anyway!
How th
Elephant in the room (Score:5, Insightful)
"From 1999 –2000 through 2017 –March 2020, US obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 41.9%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%. (NHANES, 2021)" link [cdc.gov]
This is just obesity, being 20-40 pounds overweight, while not extreme as being obese, is also very bad, and the problem is people that are 20-40 pounds overweight actually think they are doing OK, comparing themselves to the obese. In IT it's rampant, especially among the older, and everybody is dismissive of it like "oh, it's just age...". No it's not, it's laziness, bad food, and lack of desire to move.
Somehow we normalized it all, especially since such a large percentage of people are now overweight, we have ads on TV with fat people advertising whatever product. Of course life expectancy falls... what the hell people expect? Drinking coke and eating chicken fried in 2 week old oil is OK?
They did, and they do... And they will take their kids to have a "happy meal", turn them too into an overweight mess that their parents are. Hey, it's normal now!
Re:Elephant in the room (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Elephant in the room (Score:4, Insightful)
Particularly the more available part. Uncooked ingredients can be had cheap.
With skill, knowledge, time and storage space, it won'tbe more expensive. All of those are in short supply especially if you are lower income and have to work a lot to make ends meet. Last thing you have time and energy for is an hour (minimum) of meal prep. It's basically more work.
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I don't think we normalized it (Score:5, Interesting)
The Asian countries are managing the work long hours without the weight gain because they have easier access to healthy foods that are prepared for them, more walkable cities and absolutely collapsing birth rates. Meaning they don't come home and have to spend hours taking care of the kids after a long day at work. My birth rates are below sustainability but they're still well above which you'll find in Japan or even South Korea.
Basically there are reasons why obesity is a problem and it's not just because Americans are fat pigs we eat too many Whoppers and Big Macs. You'll find as you move up the socioeconomic ladder and people work less hours and have more security and more time to take care of themselves obesity goes down.
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85% with you on your post, the only thing that is out of left field is the birth rate thing. Looking after kids is not linked to being obese. Quite the opposite. It's actually hard work and effort. Running around, cleaning up after them, cooking, doing extra laundry, etc. People who actually look after kids are at a significant exercise advantage compared to their single counterparts who may just sit at home and vegetate at the TV.
It's the stress and time commitments (Score:3)
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Do you work 12 hours shifts? Or 15 hours?
A bigger elephant (Score:2)
"From 1999 –2000 through 2017 –March 2020, US obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 41.9%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%. (NHANES, 2021)" link [cdc.gov]
Obesity isn't the leading cause of death.
Fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death.
Re:A bigger elephant (Score:5, Informative)
"From 1999 –2000 through 2017 –March 2020, US obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 41.9%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%. (NHANES, 2021)" link [cdc.gov]
Obesity isn't the leading cause of death.
Fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fasta... [cdc.gov] :
Leading Causes of Death
Data are for the U.S.
Number of deaths for leading causes of death
Heart disease: 696,962
Cancer: 602,350
COVID-19: 350,831
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 200,955
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 160,264
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 152,657
Alzheimer’s disease: 134,242
Diabetes: 102,188
Influenza and pneumonia: 53,544
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 52,547
Re:A bigger elephant (Score:4, Interesting)
But also the leading causes of death are not necessarily the biggest influences on longevity. Things that kill younger people have a disproportionate effect on longevity since they cut off more years. The average age at death from Alzheimer's is 86 years old [statcan.gc.ca] (in Canada) so on average you actually have to live longer than normal to die from it.
For men under 44 the 3 leading causes of death [cdc.gov] are injuries, suicide, and homicide, in that order. I'm wondering if overdoses are categorized as unintentional injuries.
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I'm wondering if overdoses are categorized as unintentional injuries.
Yes, they are accidental unless they're suicides or homicides. Those three categories cover all forms of poisoning, including overdosing on legal or illegal drugs.
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The reason why the leading causes of death under a certain age are violent or self-induced is simply that our medical system is good enough that you don't die from pneumonia or tuberculosis at the ripe age of 40.
It's the same skewed view that we get about people lamenting how we all die of cancer and heart attacks. Yes, we do. Mostly because we already eliminated everything else that could get us first. Same for the homicide, suicide and accident statistics for people under 40: There isn't much in terms of
Re:A bigger elephant (Score:5, Informative)
Obesity isn't the leading cause of death.
Fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death.
No that's not even close. Heart disease (700k/year) has 7x the yearly death toll than all drug overdoses combined, and close to 10x higher than opioid based drugs.
Opioid overdoses (around 65k/year) would be about number 8 in the list of leading cause of death, but they aren't listed separately. They are lumped in with the CDC stats as "accidental death" which is the 5th most prevailing cause of death at around 200k / year and include not only opioids, but all drugs and non-drug related accidents as well.
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None of this is normalized. Most people can't do anything about it.
You try taking a bus to go hiking on weekends when you have two kids who can hardly walk and then tell us all how someone normalized this.
I've tried to get my city to update the bike system for 20 years now. They'll sooner spend a million bucks saving the prairie dogs then investing in a $50k soccer field, or $500k bike trail across the city.
No one cares, and if they do, they don't have the money.
--
The only thing that saves us from the bu
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A membership to a Crunch Fitness costs $16.99 per month "all-in."
When people say they don't have access to activity they mean they don't have access to their preferred activity in the exact way they imagine it would be fun. Of course, even if they did, they would quickly realize that training is a lot
We work more hours than the Japanese (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is it's cheaper to be a good person but it's more profitable to be a bad person and Americans took that fact and ran with it
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Medicaid and Medicare would like a word with you. Our medical system in the United States is heavily socialized. The only people not getting "guaranteed" care are the people who are too young for Medicare and too wealthy for Medicaid.
Re:We work more hours than the Japanese (Score:4, Insightful)
Because we haven't been letting them negotiate drug prices like insurance companies do. Because we have all kinds of stupid administrative overhead that wouldn't be necessary if we just had one program giving health care to everyone, not just some people.
Yep (Score:4, Interesting)
The rest of the civilized world realized healthcare is a human right. Here in America the leading cause of bankruptcy is medical debt. Then we have prescription drug prices. I can take a round trip flight to Germany for insulin and it’s still cheaper than paying out of pocket.
Re:Yep (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, it's a sad fact that we can all probably name at least a couple movies or shows where the driving conflict of the plot is someone needs to raise money for an exensive medical treatment to save a life and it's treated as just the way things are.
Re:Yep (Score:4, Insightful)
Friend of mine from the US came over here in Europe and had to go to a dentist because of a crippling tooth ache. Didn't want to at first because his insurance won't cover it, but eventually it turned out that he paid less without any insurance for the treatment than he would have in the US, and he also liked the result better than the work he had done in the US.
The US medical system needs an overhaul. There's simply too much going wrong when a "socialist" system is superior.
Re:Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't that one system is socialist and the other isn't socialist. It is two different methodologies of socialism.
In America, during WWII, our socialist government imposed price controls, including the price of wages. To compete, employers started to offer benefits.
After the war, the tax code was changed so that employers paid less in taxes for providing medical care than they would pay if they instead gave that money to their employees, who could then use it to buy medical plans.
Fast forward a few decades, and virtually no one who consumes medical care pays their own bills. On the supply side, cost and billing are of no concern to the providers - those functions generally don't even happen in the same building as the medical care.
Since no one involved with the treatment is paying, there is no pressure for making sensible decisions. If a rare someone comes in and wants to control their own costs, they find it basically impossible because no one knows how much anything costs.
Imagine a restaurant where there are no prices listed. None of the employees in the restaurant have any idea, generally not even with an order of magnitude or two, how much anything costs. Instead, you eat, then weeks or months later a computer in a different state will print out what amounts to a random number and call that your bill. There are stories about $45 dollar glasses of water, and $380 napkins. And sometimes you get a second bill months after that from a radiologist who glanced at the server's tray before it arrives at your table. Would you ever eat there? Does that sound like a "free market" to you?
That is basically where we are today, and I'm only scratching the surface. The process whereby a medical plan negotiates rates with medical care providers would make Kafka cry. I won't get into that here, but I'll give you a hint - none of the negotiated prices have anything to do with actual costs - none of which can even be guessed at by now.
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Then why does it work in Europe? People here generally barely pay anything or even nothing for any kind of treatment, from medication to complex heart surgery.
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Re:Yep (Score:4, Interesting)
Dentistry is uniquely fucked in the US.
During my time there I had multiple friends get awful results often involving some kind of elaborate dental surgery which American dentists seem obsessed with. People were getting all sorts of unnecessary work foisted on them. Usually quite brutal too.
Terrified me into never going to the dentist there that's for sure. I went whenever I visited home.
Re: Yep (Score:2)
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Every time you pay a medical bill in the United States, you're paying for your own care plus little bits of pieces of numerous other bills that never went paid or that only got paid in piecemeal. And yes this especially includes gubment plans like Medicaid and Medicare.
Medicaid's payout rate was 88% in 2020. Medicare is at around 80% (not sure which year that data is for, but it's recent). Somebody has to make up the difference. That's you, pal.
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Just pop up to Canada, like thousands of US seniors already do regularly when they need affordable medication to save their lives. It's closer than Germany, and mostly we speak English.
Baloney. (Score:2)
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Cheezus Christ, buddy, don't go giving the evil bastards ideas!
What did people expect? (Score:4, Interesting)
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So did US life expectancy go down more or less that of developed countries that were also afflicted with COVID? (Hint: If you're American, you won't like the answer).
National wealth a good measure of life expectancy? (Score:2)
From the summary: "The result is a high disease burden among Americans, and shorter life expectancy compared with that in comparable high-income nations over the last two decades."
I think we need to question whether high income is an appropriate measure of whether or not a country actually deserves First World status. Some Third World countries are very wealthy, but their society consists of an incredibly rich upper class supported by near-slaves who live in abject poverty.
I would be remiss not to point o
Re:National wealth a good measure of life expectan (Score:4, Informative)
Income never was a measure of whether a country is "first world". It's a political distinction which has become meaningless since the end of the Cold War: the "first world" was the NATO members, the "second world" was the Warsaw Pact members (plus, maybe, the handful of other communist states), and the "third world" was the non-aligned countries.
Which country life expectancy went up? (Score:2)
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point to countries that have such a perfect health system that their citizen's life expectancy went up during the pandemic?
The Nordic countries: Norway, Denmark, Sweden kept a small positive change; Finland and Iceland saw no significant change. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dy... [doi.org] see figure 2 and figure 5. But the point here is not that it was supposed to increase, it is that USA was the developed country (among 30) where the life expectancy has most decreased in the pandemic, and it is worth of interest to look into what factors could explain this result.
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No, the Nordic countries EXCEPT Sweden: Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland all improved under covid, but not Sweden. Sweden fucked up covid.
Downturn due to NOT taking COVID shots ? (Score:2)
...smoking, crime and poverty... (Score:2)
Stop the BS. This is nothing but an attempt do do an end-run around the Constitution by framing an explicit right as a threat to public health. Not ONCE does the word "crime" appear in the article, they're too busy blaming the existence of objects for the impact of that intentional human behavior.
I condemn Woolf and the rest of his petty-tyrant ilk for this
Native Americans and Alaska Natives (Score:3)
Booze. You lock businesses down (except for cocktail lounges and liquor stores) and people sit and drink. The above populations are particularly susceptible to the effects of alcohol. Something to do with the genetics of their Asian ancestry I think.
Not that it's totally a problem with our indigenous peoples. We have probably lost a few decades of "drink responsibly" education among white folks as well, judging by the number of drunks on the highway.
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People have been getting too old and costing too much money. I wouldn't surprise me if this is a conscious long-term effort to shorten life expectancy to try to keep cost down for the country.
Just imagine how much money is being saved by "adjusting" it a few weeks down every year...
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...this recent dip was pretty clearly partly a result of COVID...
TIFTFY
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You said it yourself. Seventy year olds don't have the strength to get up if they fall down. That's true even if they have a set of pink dumbbells or go to their silver sneakers chair fi
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Mass shootings are a very small fraction of gun deaths - it's just that unlike a regular murder they don't just break families, but whole communities, so the tragedy is multiplied.
The top 10 countries for gun deaths are well known for cartels and general gang violence.
Re: Widespread access to guns? (Score:3)
Not surprising.
Violet crime is near decades-long lows in the U.S. But the reporting of violent crime has become much more ubiquitous.
Mass shootings are probably mostly the fault of news organizations covering mass shootings. It really wasn't an issue until the Columbine attack and subsequent media storm.
While violence, and more specifically gun violence has been dropping for a long time (with some smaller backsteps over the last few years), mass shooting are becoming more frequent. But it's still a very sma
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But then the people making that argument are responsible for a host of changes that actually coincide with the rise of school/crowd shootings. So, perhaps it is not so great a surprise that th