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Comment by mdoms | Hacker News Reader

I just don't think this is true as a generalization. It may be true of American culture today, but it doesn't follow from even the past 50 years of broader human innovation against death. Consider the number of lives saved from:

- antibiotics

- seatbelts and other automotive innovations

- CFC rules

- anti smoking legislation

- etc...

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A reciprocal view is that all sci/tech advances which led to those saved lives has also led to urbanization (=> vastly accrued need for antibiotics), automobile (=> need for seatbelts and other automotive innovations)...

We may (or may not) be "more something" (for example "more happy", "more self-accomplished"...) thanks to all those advances.

> ...urbanization (=> vastly accrued need for antibiotics)...

Historically, bacterial infections were major killers in pre-industrial, predominantly rural societies globally.

Nowadays cancer, diabetes, obesity, depression/addiction, mental illness(...) are major killers.

A lot of that is because people are living long enough to have those types of issues pop up.

Maybe not as much as we think, as AFAIK diabetes, obesity, depression/addiction and mental illness (for example) are also hitting hard among youngsters.

I will get beat up for speaking up on this topic, but you are right and its related to food based on my researching this topic in nih.gov. First world countries are experiencing the highest mortality rates because of eating garbage. Insulin resistance being at the root of most of your mentioned down-stream problems. There are also a lot more chemicals in foods now. Pesticides, fungicides, etc. leading to auto-immune problems, allergies, chronic low-grade inflammation, higher triglycerides, higher small dense particles in the LDL cholesterol. To find some of the studies backing this, use google and put in queries like "site:nih.gov insulin resistance" and other similar terms. Some of the studies contain graphs by country. The most fascinating studies are the ones that include cultures that are still hunter-gatherers. Most of them have no traces of cardio vascular disease, mental illness, obesity and certainly no diabetes.

> its related to food

GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) rules. Add sleep (of dubious quality) deprivation, 'bad stress' (no real motivation, extreme noise and light, near-constant state of haste...), lack of exercise... feedback-boosting the destructive process we now see nearly everywhere in full swing.

Automotive deaths are another example of a failure, not success. Something like 40,000 deaths a year still. Add guns to the list as well. Covid isn’t the first mass killer we just kind of learn to live with and ignore.

The US is arguably a bit of an outlier on automotive deaths. In most highly developed countries these peaked in the 70s or so and fell sharply since (due to seatbelts, better car design, harsh anti-drink-driving rules, etc). The UK peaked at 8k per year in the late 60s, for instance, and fell to reliably under 2k by the last decade. The US peaked around the same time at 55k, but fell much more modestly to 38k.

Gun deaths, of course, are a very US thing; they don’t really register in most developed countries.

This is a VERY American perspective. Neither Covid nor gun deaths have been significant in NZ this year.

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