[HN Gopher] The average American has the same life expectancy as...
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The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part
of England
Author : grecy
Score : 81 points
Date : 2023-03-31 19:08 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| hooverd wrote:
| That's impressive, considering the English love for brown food.
| cpursley wrote:
| At least it many parts of England there's still sidewalks.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Can you name an American food that isn't brown?
|
| At least in the UK people eat vegetables that don't come from
| cans. Americans sure do love their bland fatty salty food,
| though.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| The solution to a low quality HN comment is to downvote it,
| not to return the volley with another low quality comment.
| hooverd wrote:
| Hey, those munchies boxes look delicious!
| causality0 wrote:
| Overall an excellent and correct thread. However I do have to
| take issue with his choice to equate comparing diverse and non-
| diverse areas to "adjusting for race". That is not what that is.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Christ Jesus, the USA are on average as good as Merthyr Tydfil,
| the epicenter of Welsh coal mining, which Maggie Thatcher
| destroyed. It's bad, but no one anticipated it to be that bad.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Yeah, well, as long as I can sling code for 100K+ a year in
| this fine country, it's not my problem what happens thousands
| of miles away over in Mississippi.
|
| --HN
| [deleted]
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Live fast, die young. What's the issue?
| fullshark wrote:
| Why don't they just eat cake learn to code?
| suprjami wrote:
| I'm not surprised at all. If you compare individual US states
| to other countries, some parts of the US south have worse
| healthcare systems than third-world nations. The US is by far
| the worst health country in the OECD.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I don't think it's really about healthcare. It's about
| everything else in life, that makes people obese or driven
| into a life of drugs (meth, etc.). Healthcare doesn't really
| save you from that.
| slaw wrote:
| At the same time US government spends the most in the world
| on socialized healthcare.
| mhoad wrote:
| Of course they do. Just look at how that entire system is
| set up. It's very clearly a for profit driven industry
| first and foremost and a healthcare system in a very
| distant second place.
| paxys wrote:
| The US government spends the most in the world on
| subsidizing corporations for healthcare. There is nothing
| "socialized" about it. The public in general gets very
| little of that benefit. And that holds true even if you
| include Medicare.
| slaw wrote:
| I meant only Medicare and Medicaid. The US government
| spends on Medicare and Medicare more then any other
| country on healthcare.
| rolenthedeep wrote:
| That's really only because healthcare is so absolutely
| insanely more expensive here.
|
| You'd have to normalize those numbers. It doesn't mean
| the same thing if the US spends a billion dollars on 1
| million procedures when a more civilized society can do
| those same million procedures for 300 million.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Don't forget the VA, but this stat always shocks people.
| I don't think people's brains can even hold on to it.
| It's important to use italics: The US _government_ spends
| more on healthcare per capita than all socialized
| systems. The difference between life and death in the US
| isn 't about paying lower taxes, it's purely rent-
| seeking; i.e. we pay once for healthcare, and we pay once
| again to the landlords of healthcare, directly out of our
| pockets.
| shams93 wrote:
| Its actually worse, imagine all that with no social safety net,
| no functioning medical system. Here our medical and educational
| systems are so destroyed that not even the wealthy have a good
| outcome, wealth just enables their kids to get into addiction
| earlier than poor kids.
| legitster wrote:
| "1 in 25 Americans being born will not make it to their 40th
| birthday."
|
| Wow. Actually impressed with the analysis backing this up. If you
| read the entire thread, he actually covers nearly every
| correlating factor I could think of.
|
| And it's pretty clearly drugs, guns, suicide, and cars. (The
| cardio health one doesn't seem as strong).
|
| The one that is crazy to me is the uptick in driving fatalities.
| Cars are an order of magnitude safer than they used to be and we
| _were_ trending towards 0. An entire generation has to be that
| much more reckless than before to make that kind of a dent.
| dudul wrote:
| Re: car fatalities, one word: phones.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >"1 in 25 Americans being born will not make it to their 40th
| birthday." >(The cardio health one doesn't seem as strong).
|
| Here's a bit of an anecdote, but I bet my family isn't alone in
| this type of story... my cousin died from cardiac arrest at age
| 45. Keeping the story here brief - he was a high-income
| business owner who got into a tough spot in his marriage and
| business, found himself without health insurance when he had a
| medical episode. Knew something was wrong and would likely
| bankrupt him - and we think that's why he didn't follow up with
| his doctor and was dead two weeks later. Congenital issue,
| could have been easily resolved - but without health insurance
| it was probably a death sentence either physically or
| financially.
|
| Now, this was just as the ACA was coming into play - but I'd
| argue it's moot. The ACA was well-intentioned, but has not
| actually improved the insurance or care situation for the
| majority of Americans. I need a surgery at present that won't
| be covered by my insurance to any meaningful degree, and being
| in rural America my care options are limited. So I'll live with
| regular pain because the system doesn't work. And I hear
| stories like this in my social circles weekly.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Cars are getting so big that people can't drive them. An
| indescribably sad statistic: In the US, a parent drives over
| and kills their kid in the driveway every other day [1].
|
| All the guns also cause -a bunch of-- some small kids to kill
| their siblings every year.
|
| [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna52109
| imwithstoopid wrote:
| > Cars are getting so big that people can't drive them
|
| and likewise, people are getting so big they can't drive
| their cars...
|
| in Texas, police officers in some municipalities have
| requested that their vehicles be modified to elevate the
| steering wheel...they literally cannot jam their stomachs
| between the seat and the wheel, and if they push the seat
| back far enough they cannot reach the pedals
| Jiro wrote:
| >All the guns also cause a bunch of small kids to kill their
| siblings every year.
|
| No they don't, unless you're going to quibble about what a
| bunch is. Numbers that seem to show lots of deaths to "kids"
| pretty much always include age ranges old enough to include
| gang members.
| glhaynes wrote:
| _Numbers that seem to show lots of deaths to "kids" pretty
| much always include age ranges old enough to include gang
| members._
|
| So what if they were? It's pretty damn sad for a person
| young enough to be considered a child to die from gun
| violence regardless of who they were! A sad societal
| failure on top of our failure to set them up with life
| circumstances that made them unlikely to fall in with a
| gang.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It matters because it's ineffective to pursue the wrong
| root causes.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| I'll admit I didn't look up those numbers but I read about
| these things way too regularly.
|
| But that's of course not the main thing about guns and kids
| in the US like everyone knows.
| bitwize wrote:
| Statistically speaking, suicide is the #1 cause of gun
| death in the US, gang activity is #2.
|
| School shootings are far down the list. They get a lot of
| attention but don't account for a large proportion of
| deaths.
|
| Of course, that any of these deaths occur is tragic,
| which is why the most sensible solution is repeal of the
| Second Amendment and implementation of a nationwide,
| federal license requirement to purchase or own a firearm.
| 120-day grace period. License each gun, turn them in, or
| go to jail.
|
| Let the gangs resort to cutting each other like Japanese
| gangs.
| japhyr wrote:
| That doesn't require a repeal of the second amendment.
| That just requires a willingness to interpret the full
| text of the amendment, instead of focusing only on the
| last four words.
|
| School shootings are far down the list as far as
| fatalities go. But that's a poor way to measure the
| impact of school shootings. The trauma inflicted by each
| of these events goes _way_ beyond the number of children
| killed. Everyone who has heard actual gunshots in their
| own school building feels life-changing trauma.
|
| When a kid in the US says "I'm scared to go to school,"
| you can't tell them they have nothing to be scared of.
| You can tell them "It's not likely to happen at your
| school today." That's small comfort.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You'll read about those but not suicides and that is a
| greater problem.
| sammalloy wrote:
| > Cars are getting so big that people can't drive them.
|
| While controversial because car companies in the US
| intentionally chose to market large SUVs to the public, there
| is some evidence that smaller vehicles are safer and that
| auto manufacturers have doubled down on unsafe vehicles. Why
| this is the case, isn't exactly known, but one of the
| theories is that bad drivers will get behind bigger cars and
| take more risks.
|
| I've driven both large SUVs and smaller subcompacts, and I
| can talk at length on the pros and cons. However, as a
| driver, I can tell you that smaller cars are often bullied by
| larger cars, and this gives weight to the idea that people
| driving larger vehicles take larger risks, resulting in
| greater danger to the driver and to other cars and
| pedestrians.
|
| There's also the mistaken perception by older generations
| that smaller cars are inherently more dangerous; this was
| once true, and everyone can point to disastrously unsafe
| compact cars in the 1970s and 1980s. But due to modern
| technology and safety enhancements, this probably hasn't been
| true for the last two decades or more. This older, erroneous
| belief continues to underlie why people choose larger
| vehicles today.
| bwilli123 wrote:
| These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo&t=1858s
| logi2mus wrote:
| Risk compensation
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > I've driven both large SUVs and smaller subcompacts, and
| I can talk at length on the pros and cons.
|
| One thing I find genuinely surprising is that the Renault
| Zoes we have as pool cars at work have got far bigger blind
| spots and far worse visibility than my 25-year-old Range
| Rover.
|
| And, in turn, although that Range Rover is described as an
| SUV (it's not especially sporty, it's a top-heavy three
| tonne army truck with nicer seats), it's the same length
| and width as most "normal" family saloons. It's got a much
| smaller footprint on the road than some large 5-seaters
| like a Tesla Model S.
| LanceH wrote:
| Smaller cars are more dangerous in a multi-car accident.
|
| Most accidents only involve a single car.
|
| There is less control in larger vehicles.
|
| Everyone thinks they are a better driver than they are and
| the only way they'll end up in an accident is if someone
| else hits them.
|
| Add all this up and many want to drive larger cars.
| jjevanoorschot wrote:
| It's not necessarily recklessness.
|
| Cars in the US have gotten much larger and heavier in recent
| years.
|
| A Ford F150 might be safe to drive, but it's not safer for
| pedestrians and other road users than the smaller cars we used
| to have.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I bet phone usage is also a factor.
|
| Keep in mind that while we had cell phones for a while, it's
| only within the past 10 years that the whole "distraction
| economy" became a thing, so while people may have used phones
| to _communicate_ back in the day, nowadays they might be
| using the phones even more just to attend to those
| distractions.
| asdff wrote:
| With T9 you could send a text with your one hand in your
| pocket. Try that with an iPhone...
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| paganel wrote:
| Plus, modern US trucks are as big (if not as heavy) as WW2
| tanks. Photos taken from the infamous DailyMail, but they
| look correct to me, that is [1] and [2]
|
| [1] https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/25/21/45875073-98235
| 77-...
|
| [2] https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/25/21/45876985-98235
| 77-...
| dave333 wrote:
| In the US cars likely kill more people through lack of exercise
| than through accidents. The UK has small compact towns and
| cities with street layouts designed in the horse and buggy days
| that force people to get out of their car and walk around the
| shops - there are very very few if any drive-thru businesses
| and only the big newer supermarkets have dedicated parking
| lots.
| [deleted]
| nescioquid wrote:
| I imagine it is not always possible to distinguish between a
| car accident and a suicide.
| rolenthedeep wrote:
| Something happened during the initial stages of the pandemic.
| People lost their absolute minds and aggressive and reckless
| driving got way, way worst than I've ever seen.
|
| Hell, about an hour ago a _cop_ tailgated me while I was going
| 15 over the limit, wove through traffic to cut me off, run a
| red light, then damn near ran another driver off the road. No
| lights, no emergency, just an asshole. This is the behavior you
| have to expect from _all_ drivers now.
|
| At least two or three times a week I have a close call that
| would wreck my car or seriously hurt someone, and I pretty much
| only drive up and down the one road between my house and the
| office, it's a 5 mile drive.
|
| There's something very deeply wrong in American society, and I
| don't see things improving any time soon.
| standardUser wrote:
| I thought people in the US drove like insane idiots long
| before the pandemic. Weaving in and out of lanes, excessive
| speeding, road rage over the slightest inconvenience and, the
| dumbest one to me because it is virtually effortless, failure
| to use turn signals. It's very easy to drive safely but a
| good chunk of divers seem to outright refuse.
|
| Having said that, the data backs you up. 7% increase in per
| capita road fatalities in 2020. Then a 10.5% increase on top
| of that in 2021!
| antibasilisk wrote:
| >Cars are an order of magnitude safer than they used to be and
| we were trending towards 0. An entire generation has to be that
| much more reckless than before to make that kind of a dent.
|
| Jevons Paradox perhaps; you make the cars safer, so people feel
| more empowered to drive recklessly.
| retrac wrote:
| > the uptick in driving fatalities [...] An entire generation
| has to be that much more reckless
|
| Smartphones.
| imwithstoopid wrote:
| ....and even HN continues to dispute that diet and exercise are
| essential for longevity
| kristopolous wrote:
| Health is primarily a social enterprise, that's the point
|
| Clean water, sewage control, clean air, clean food, safe
| cities, prohibition on toxic chemicals in the environment,
| access to good information and appropriate care, disease
| control - hyper individual personal responsibility finger
| wagging won't get you anywhere to fixing these things and
| that's what the "there is no such thing as a society" people do
| not get because they've trained themselves to call those things
| socialism.
|
| These are the consequences of that pig headed pridefully
| ignorant ideology
| Edd314159 wrote:
| Blackpool catching strays on this one
| reisse wrote:
| The title here is kind of misleading (need to report @dang, I
| think?). The tweet talks about healthy life expectancy, which is
| different from life expectancy overall:
|
| > the average American now has the same healthy life expectancy
| (years lived in good health) as someone in Blackpool, the town
| with England's lowest life expectancy (by far)
| Kalanos wrote:
| blackpool is the jersey shore of england?
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Is Jersey Shore full of bright orange people in cheap "fast
| fashion" clothing trying to pretend they're on roughly ten
| times as much money as they really make, who make a big show of
| ordering "expensive" vodka and flash their platinum credit card
| around as they chop their 30 quid bag of coke?
|
| Then having thoroughly spoiled the weekend for everyone else,
| they'll pile into their idiotic loud car that they can't really
| afford the payments on, and fuck off back to their idiotic
| trashy house that they can't really afford the payments on?
|
| Then yes, it is.
| signal11 wrote:
| I saw this other life-expectancy-related story a a while ago, and
| there are probably COVID-related reasons, but I'm surprised this
| hasn't got more publicity:
|
| > China's life expectancy is now higher than that of the US [1].
|
| Here's a slightly deeper dive into this story [2].
|
| [1] https://qz.com/china-life-expectancy-exceeds-us-1849483265
|
| [2] https://www.newsweek.com/china-us-life-expectancy-
| birth-2021...
| version_five wrote:
| No doubt there's a real underlying problem here. The abuse of
| comparison doesn't help anything though. I'd guess (but it's a
| guess) that average american life expectancy is going down
| because of some demographics who have it really bad (opioid users
| eg). That's an acute problem that has no meaning when averaged
| with everything else. Quoting averages makes it seem like there's
| some sort of broad malaise as opposed to specific issues for
| specific groups.
| roundandround wrote:
| I think the Oxycontin/Purdue scam is pretty typical of how
| corruptions that were once targeted by the government to
| intentionally victimize minorities in ways not large enough to
| wash away other gains in overall life expectancy have spread to
| a difficulty in limiting industries victimizing larger more
| diverse groups in ways that undermine the stats the US was
| protecting.
| zhivota wrote:
| If you have read the article you know it talks about how
| comparisons across income percentiles yield reductions in US
| life expectancy across every income level. It's not an isolated
| issue.
| Clubber wrote:
| Also, we have really expensive healthcare, so preventative
| medicine and recovery type treatment is not done nearly as much
| as other countries I suspect. You'd think something would
| change after the massive cracks in the system revealed to
| everybody by COVID, but it didn't.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| As fucked up as death is, I wonder if a lower life expectancy
| isn't the worst thing in the world.
|
| To some extent in the West, but especially in Asia, we're really
| starting to see the demographic issues that come with people
| living for too long.
|
| Aging populations, plummeting birthrates, redirection of public
| resources away from children and families...
|
| Maybe we shouldn't be trying as hard as we are to drag on life
| into the late 80s and beyond.
| robbiep wrote:
| You haven't understood the article.
|
| The decline in life expectancy in the US is not being driven by
| more rapid decline in the aging population but by young people
| dying earlier exerting influence over the entire curve.
|
| I can assure you that the burden of age related conditions will
| continue to grow but that again is because the largest
| generation humans have ever produced is aging out. And on the
| most part they're more functional and able later into their
| senescence than ever before thanks to hip replacements and
| laser eye surgery and all the rest.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't think you understand the comment.
|
| If the life expectancy drops, there are fewer elderly to care
| for.
|
| If people don't make it to 70, you don't have to care for 70+
| year Olds. It is a fair thought experiment to explore.
|
| Depending on what your priorities are, it could be optimal
| for everyone to die before retirement age.
| imwithstoopid wrote:
| its not like people are just healthy and then when they hit
| 70, _poof!_
|
| obese people will have health issues from early adulthood
| onward
|
| healthcare isn't the answer - the doctor says "lose
| weight", and people ignore it or make excuses and are even
| more obese at their next checkup
| wetmore wrote:
| Sure, but the problem is that there is not enough of a
| young population to support the older population. So if the
| life expectancy drops because younger people are dying
| more, that just makes the inbalance even worse, with the
| population being even more top heavy.
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