Here is something important, contrary to saxi's Opening Post here:
The graph is stunning and so is this report.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/25/1164819944/live-free-and-die-the-sad-state-of-u-s-life-expectancy'Live free and die?' The sad state of U.S. life expectancy
March 25, 20237:01 AM ET
Life expectancy continues to decline in the U.S. as it rebounds in other countries
Life expectancy around the world decreased in 2020 due to COVID-19. Most peer countries rebounded by 2021, while the U.S. continued to decline.
Just before Christmas, federal health officials confirmed life expectancy in America had dropped for a nearly unprecedented second year in a row – down to 76 years. While countries all over the world saw life expectancy rebound during the second year of the pandemic after the arrival of vaccines, the U.S. did not.
Then, last week, more bad news: Maternal mortality in the U.S. reached a high in 2021. Also, a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association found rising mortality rates among U.S. children and adolescents.
"This is the first time in my career that I've ever seen [an increase in pediatric mortality] – it's always been declining in the United States for as long as I can remember," says the JAMA paper's lead author Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. "Now, it's increasing at a magnitude that has not occurred at least for half a century."
Across the lifespan, and across every demographic group, Americans die at younger ages than their counterparts in other wealthy nations.
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The answer is varied. A big part of the difference between life and death in the U.S. and its peer countries is people dying or being killed before age 50. The "Shorter Lives" report specifically points to factors like teen pregnancy, drug overdoses, HIV, fatal car crashes, injuries, and violence.
"Two years difference in life expectancy probably comes from the fact that firearms are so available in the United States," Crimmins says. "There's the opioid epidemic, which is clearly ours – that was our drug companies and other countries didn't have that because those drugs were more controlled. Some of the difference comes from the fact that we are more likely to drive more miles. We have more cars," and ultimately, more fatal crashes.
MORE:
https://www.newsnationnow.com/health/child-mortality-covid/And, contrary to what ConfedSS says, when he puts most of the Blame on "Big Pharma" there are other causes of death.
“It turns out that COVID-19 had a marginal role to play in explaining this,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, Director Emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of the JAMA essay.
Woolf said the increase has been driven by four causes: suicides, homicides, drug overdoses and car accidents.
Firearms are now the leading cause of death for children and teenagers, accounting for almost half of the mortality increase in 2020. More than four times as many 1 to 19-year-old’s died by homicide as from COVID-19 in 2021, Woolf found.
Posted: Thu Jan 30, 2020 4:29 pm
