US Life Expectancy Rose to 78.4 years in 2023 - Highest Level Since Pandemic (nbcnews.com) 43
An anonymous reader shared this report from NBC News:
U.S. life expectancy rose last year, hitting its highest level since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The report, released Thursday, found that life expectancy at birth was 78.4 years in 2023. That's a significant rise — nearly a full year — from the life expectancy of 77.5 years in 2022. "The increase we had this year — the 0.9 year — that's unheard of prior to the pandemic," said Ken Kochanek, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics who co-authored the report. "Life expectancy in the United States never goes up or down any more than one- or two-tenths," he said. "But then when Covid happened, you had this gigantic drop, and now we have a gigantic drop in Covid. So, you have this gigantic increase in life expectancy."
From 2019 to 2021, U.S. life expectancy dropped from 78.8 years to 76.4. Covid deaths fell significantly last year: Whereas Covid was the fourth leading cause of death in 2022, it was the 10th in 2023, according to the new report. Last year, Covid was the underlying or contributing cause of more than 76,000 deaths, according to an August CDC report, compared with more than 350,000 such deaths in 2020.
The new findings are based on an analysis of death certificates from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The results showed that the overall death rate for the U.S. population decreased by 6%.
"According to the new report, the top five causes of death in the U.S. last year were heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, stroke and chronic lower respiratory diseases. Death rates fell for nine of the top 10 causes in 2023, while the rate of cancer deaths remained fairly unchanged..."
The Atlantic shares some other positive statistics, including reports that America's traffic fatalities keep declining, while drug-overdose deaths also dropped 3% between 2022 and 2023 and there was also a double-digit drop in murder rates.
"America is suddenly getting healthier," they write. "No one knows why."
The report, released Thursday, found that life expectancy at birth was 78.4 years in 2023. That's a significant rise — nearly a full year — from the life expectancy of 77.5 years in 2022. "The increase we had this year — the 0.9 year — that's unheard of prior to the pandemic," said Ken Kochanek, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics who co-authored the report. "Life expectancy in the United States never goes up or down any more than one- or two-tenths," he said. "But then when Covid happened, you had this gigantic drop, and now we have a gigantic drop in Covid. So, you have this gigantic increase in life expectancy."
From 2019 to 2021, U.S. life expectancy dropped from 78.8 years to 76.4. Covid deaths fell significantly last year: Whereas Covid was the fourth leading cause of death in 2022, it was the 10th in 2023, according to the new report. Last year, Covid was the underlying or contributing cause of more than 76,000 deaths, according to an August CDC report, compared with more than 350,000 such deaths in 2020.
The new findings are based on an analysis of death certificates from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The results showed that the overall death rate for the U.S. population decreased by 6%.
"According to the new report, the top five causes of death in the U.S. last year were heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, stroke and chronic lower respiratory diseases. Death rates fell for nine of the top 10 causes in 2023, while the rate of cancer deaths remained fairly unchanged..."
The Atlantic shares some other positive statistics, including reports that America's traffic fatalities keep declining, while drug-overdose deaths also dropped 3% between 2022 and 2023 and there was also a double-digit drop in murder rates.
"America is suddenly getting healthier," they write. "No one knows why."
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Because who doesn't want people dying from measles [protectourcare.org] or being put on an iron lung from polio [bbc.com]?
It's not "bellyaching". It's calling out a fraudster who continues to repeat lie after lie about things he knows nothing about and which kills people.
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What job? To bring life expectancies down?
You actually think he should be put in charge of a government department, in particular one whose mandate directly correlates with life expectancy? Do you just hate humans?
Re: Here we go (Score:3)
Survivor bias? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps people that would have died in 2023 due to old age had already been snuffed out due to the peak pandemic years of 2020-1.
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Not just "old age" but less healthy people in general, or people who are less careful about their health or people who are reckless.
Also, add in people are who genetically, environmentally, socially, or financially unfortunate.
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Bingo. All while criminality related trend continues as population ages. Murder is almost totally a young man's game.
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Got it on the first try!
The summary says: "America is suddenly getting healthier," they write. "No one knows why." I'm pretty sure we are not getting that much healthier -it is just that the really unhealthy ones died off in the pandemic. If we were a few years from expiration, the pandemic bumped up our use by date.
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This and the fact that the opioid problem appears to be burning itself out. Thereâ(TM)s been articles about it recently. Nobody is sure whatâ(TM)s going on, ....
But it may be related to (at least?) one cartel being concerned about being blamed for the fentanyl deaths (both by the outgoing and incoming US administrations - regardless of which one won the election), becoming subject to military-grade "law enforcement", so they ordered their rank-and-file not to sell or possess fentanyl (on pain of d
They also haven't fought a war in 79 years (Score:2)
It's over 90 years. Probably because they don't eat processed GMO junk.
For better or worse, relying on the USA to provide your security for 79 years does wonders for a country's economy and life expectancy. Operating a military is quite expensive, both in terms of money as well as infrastructure investments and lifespan of the population...not to mention general stress. It's been pretty much 79 years since a Japanese family had to grieve a Japanese soldier's death?
Also, Japan eats lots of junk food. Don't be too certain they're the poster child for healthy eating. There'
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For better or worse, relying on the USA to provide your security for 79 years does wonders for a country's economy and life expectancy.
Relying on free US dollars for Japan's military security certainly significantly helps Japan's economy. It's unclear how this leads to increased life expectancy.
Also, Japan eats lots of junk food. Don't be too certain they're the poster child for healthy eating. There's plenty we can learn from them. I personally like how they integrate their elderly into the family and community more and give them more of a sense of purpose than we seem to do. However, I would wager their lifespan has quite a bit to do with lack of wars and crime and fewer motorists dying in traffic accidents (since so many more of them are urban). I wouldn't assume diet plays the vast majority of the role in their longer lifespan.
Japanese eat plenty of junk food, but not necesarily any more than Americans. If you take a look at non-junk Japanese food, a lot of Japanese food is processed, at least in the sense of not recognizing the shape of any source vegetables or meat. It's all very tasty, but not necessarily the most healthy. However, they do eat smaller portions. Ar
Yeah, but war and accident deaths hit early (Score:2)
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Actually 84 years in Japan, similar to rich European countries.
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Life expectancy in the EU is 81 years. That's closer to America than Japan.
Asian-Americans' life expectancy is 84. So Japan's life expectancy is more likely due to genes than diet.
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He said rich EU countries. Not even that rich, Spain is 84 years. Italy, Sweden and France are all over 83.
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The USA doesnt come near the top.
But life expectancy in the Roman Empire was just 20–33. and the world average around 1900 was just 31-32, so be happy!
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Don't forget the high infant mortality bringing down the average. If you made it adulthood, the life expectancy was likely closer to 60 with the odd outlier reaching a hundred.
"America is suddenly getting healthier," (Score:3)
250 million people take ivermectin every year (Score:4, Informative)
Over the past decade, the global scientific community have begun to recognize the unmatched value of an extraordinary drug, ivermectin, that originates from a single microbe unearthed from soil in Japan. Work on ivermectin has seen its discoverer, Satoshi mura, of Tokyo’s prestigious Kitasato Institute, receive the 2014 Gairdner Global Health Award and the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with a collaborating partner in the discovery and development of the drug, William Campbell of Merck & Co. Incorporated. Today, ivermectin is continuing to surprise and excite scientists, offering more and more promise to help improve global public health by treating a diverse range of diseases, with its unexpected potential as an antibacterial, antiviral and anti-cancer agent being particularly extraordinary.
The unique and extraordinary microorganism that produces the avermectins (from which ivermectin is derived) was discovered by mura in 1973 (Figure 1). It was sent to Merck laboratories to be run through a specialized screen for anthelmintics in 1974 and the avermectins were found and named in 1975. The safer and more effective derivative, ivermectin, was subsequently commercialized, entering the veterinary, agricultural and aquaculture markets in 1981. The drug’s potential in human health was confirmed a few years later and it was registered in 1987 and immediately provided free of charge (branded as Mectizan)—‘as much as needed for as long as needed’—with the goal of helping to control Onchocerciasis (also known as River Blindness) among poverty-stricken populations throughout the tropics. Uses of donated ivermectin to tackle other so-called ‘neglected tropical diseases’ soon followed, while commercially available products were introduced for the treatment of other human diseases.
Perhaps more than any other drug, ivermectin is a drug for the world’s poor. For most of this century, some 250 million people have been taking it annually to combat two of the world’s most devastating, disfiguring, debilitating and stigma-inducing diseases, Onchocerciasis and Lymphatic filariasis. Most of the recipients live in remote, rural, desperately under-resourced communities in developing countries and have virtually no access to even the most rudimentary of medical interventions. Moreover, all the treatments have been made available free of charge thanks to the unprecedented drug donation program.
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
Re: 250 million people take ivermectin every year (Score:3)
While that's all true, it's also true that people were taking horse dewormer for no reason.
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Well, if you happened to have both Covid and a bad worm infection, that dewormer may be life saving.
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The people who take ivermectin every year did so at a very different and carefully controlled dose. Yes we should absolutely differentiate people who were prescribed ivermectin, and idiots who were taking horse de-wormer. The fact that the active ingredient is the same doesn't mean the latter weren't gambling with their health.
Picking up ivermectin at a animal feed shop will very quickly net you 12x the recommended dose. Try doing that with acetaminophen (a drug that even more people take every year) and re
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It's because inflation made booze too expensive.
Great news! (Score:2)
If this trend continues, perhaps we will rise closer to the top of the mid-pack and catch up with Estonia! As well we should, since we have the highest healthcare costs per capita in the world!
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https://www.healthsystemtracke... [healthsystemtracker.org]
Eh?
Weird. (Score:2)
We were told during the election that the country was going down the toilet.
Who would have thought drumpf was lying.
Who wants to live longer than that? (Score:2)