Comment by Balgair | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Balgair | Hacker News Reader

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A few points I saw:

Pg. 8: Alzheimer's Disease caused deaths for both males and females increased a fair bit! And for males, Unintentional Deaths also increased recently. Note that the Y-axis is in a LOG scale; any movement upwards is a lot.

Pg. 10: Yeah, Juul and the like really are hurting children. Grades 2 & 3 Obesity are increasing too. Both are not good.

Pg. 11: Asthma in black children has gone up a fair amount.

Pg. 14: West Coast and Virginian essential vaccination is under 2/3 babies (3 years or younger). That is WELL below herd immunity. New England, Deep South, and Plains states are above 3/4.

Pg. 21: Ages 15-44 have seen an uptick in mortality. Note: The y-axis is in LOG scale, so it's been a fair bit of an uptick.

Pg. 22: A big uptick in infant mortality due to unintentional injuries.

Pg. 23: ... Jesus ... a huge increase in child suicide rates and an increase in teen homicide and suicide rates. Note: The y-axis is in LOG scale.

Pg. 24: HIV deaths are WAY down (!), unintentional injuries and liver cirrhosis are up.

Pg. 25: Alzheimer's deaths in the elderly are up a fair amount.

pg. 26: Holy shit ... overdose rates are just ... wow ...

pg. 27: Appalachia and New England ... good Lord ... I mean, you hear things about it all, but wow.

pg. 29: Cirrhosis deaths in middle aged men are really climbing. The booze, it ain't good.

Aside: On the increases in 'unintentional death'. I get a whiff of the issues that Colorado Springs had with their teen suicide cell a few years back. The coroner, in deference to the religious families of the deceased, would label the deaths not as a suicide, but as something different. The problem became that since these deaths were not recorded properly, CDC officials were not alerted and the suicide cell was allowed to fester. There were a lot of kids that died as a result of that. The increase in 'unintentional deaths' may be something similar, where the coroners are recording the deaths in deference to the wishes of the family. I've not a shred of proof on this, but I get a strong smell of it from causally looking at the data.

I would add that Cirrhosis isn't just alcohol. Another major contributor is sugar and complex carbs. There are about 87 million Americans that meet the criteria for Metabolic Syndrome and that is directly related and getting worse with time.

It's also caused by hepatitis (B and C)[1] which effects millions of people in the US[2].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrhosis#Causes

2: https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/hcv/cfaq.htm#statistics

Hepatitis B adult vaccination rates seem to be woefully low in the US (25-33%), and while there is treatment for Hep C, it is very expensive ($84k for a three month course).

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/imz-managers/coverage/adultvaxv....

and https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/hemochromatosis which affects an estimated 30% of americans

Simple carbs?

[Edited] I am awake now. Simple carbs have more of a glycemic load and thus more impact on the liver. When your body responds to glucose, it releases insulin. Over time you build up a resistance to insulin. Your liver has to compensate for this by using up stored glutathione. I am very much over simplifying for the purpose of HN, but long story short, sugar, processed foods, grains, put a heavy load on the liver and pancreas

For example, green leafy vegetables are complex carbohydrates. They have very little glycemic load and will not harm your liver.

Pretty much all carbs are bad news. Always subtract fiber content from carbs and what is left over, your liver and pancreas will be dealing with. Vegetables have a lot of fiber for example.

You have the two backwards.

sorry yes, multi-tasking :-) thankyou. I shall get back to work.

"Pg. 10: Yeah, Juul and the like really are hurting children. Grades 2 & 3 Obesity are increasing too. Both are not good."

I read the charts a little differently - overall tobacco product usage has gone down quite significantly, with cigarettes and cigars driving the majority of that. I think it's a safe assumption to make that at least some of that drop is due to the switch to e-cigarettes like Juul. Obviously "how much" of that drop is due to the increase in e-cigarettes vs. the natural decline of smoking is in question, but I would not draw a conclusion that e-cigarettes are hurting children.

Why does the report not put spotlight put on car crash deaths? Footnote links to data that says over 1/4 of unintentional injuries are from motor vehicle deaths, more than even overdoses. Add on that sitting on your butt in traffic or keeping your kids "safe" indoors is going to increase obesity and heart disease.

Do you have a source on the Colorado Springs suicide cell/coroner cover up? The number of high-school age related suicides I heard about seemed high but it wasn't like I could compare it to someplace else.

https://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/28/teen-suicide-contagious-...

It wasn't a cover up, per se, just a compassionate coroner that unintentionally threw a wrench into the apparatus.

Compare it to the Palo Alto one from a bit ago:

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/disturbing-suicide-cluster-pro...

Considering the recent piece I heard on NPR about the link between sugar and Alzheimer's Disease and the anti-fat/pro-sugar campaign, that makes sense that those numbers are up significantly.

Thank you for taking the time to provide a synopsis!

It is actually super readable! Takes, maybe 10 min to skim through, a good afternoon coffee break.

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