U.S. life expectancy falls by a full year | Hacker News Reader

U.S. life expectancy falls by a full year

slate.com

60 pointslxm30 comments

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Latinos in the US have a substantially higher life expectancy than non-Latino whites? That's kind of a surprise.

What's less of a surprise is Black people having a life expectancy that's almost 6 years lower.

Why is it less of a surprise?

More poverty, combined with expensive health care.

Also, apparently black people are more likely to get shot.

Also, there have been studies that show that doctors generally consider black people to have higher pain tolerance and also doubt their reported symptoms more. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/racial-disparities-see...

They also do that with women, apparently.

Tho, one is a myth and straight racism; the other comes with women being chronically understudied. E.g. heart attack symptoms are different, some medication does work differently, women do need less vaccines, and so on. The mere assumption of "black" people's biology to differ much, is uneducated and bigoted legacy crap, while women really do have a different metabolism and body then men, which is also known. Not saying one failure is better than the other, really... just different issues.

I think they're related and they're both terrible. It takes white men as the standard and everybody who differs from that is of lesser concern. Of course there are differences in details; black people assumed to be different in ways they aren't, while with women known differences are ignored. Either way, they're not taken seriously.

How can we blame a >1% decrease in life expectancy on a disease which according to the CDC (for under 70's) has a <0.5% infection fatality rate?

My understanding is that many survivors have long lasting physical hardships that impact their day to day health significantly, even a year after infection.

Other second and third order effects could account for this as well.

People really don’t understand that 25% of people who contract Covid-19 have long term effects from it. It can shred your heart, it can ruin your lung capacity, there are reports of seizures in a small portion, and yet people will talk about how “it’s just a flu.”

Honestly, the long term effects scare me far more than the infection itself.

Source?

The CDC's website lists specific long-term complaints. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects....

This one gives a number of 50% that exhibit long term symptoms, but I don't believe that 50% number is what I was referring to in my earlier comment. I believe the 20-25% number I was referencing was for specifically long term physical damage, not just symptoms.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/what-...

Highlights from the article: - "Some previously healthy people who survived COVID have been left with evidence of injury to the heart and kidneys"

A close friend of mine caught COVID-19 in November and still can't climb a flight of stairs without serious effort and labored breathing. They were an otherwise perfectly health mid-20s male with no other health issues. It absolutely thrashed their lungs and lung capacity.

- "[...] doctors around the world were reporting various brain conditions in people with COVID."

A non-trivial amount of people who catch COVID have developed seizures. Whether it's because of COVID or just exacerbated by the virus is unclear yet, but there is a clear relationship between the two that will probably become clearer with more time and data.

- "There also are people who survived COVID and have no evidence of injury to the heart, kidneys, or brain — but who nevertheless have not returned to full health. They still have fatigue, body aches, shortness of breath, difficulty concentrating, inability to exercise, headache, and trouble sleeping. Some studies find that more than 50% of people who "recovered" from COVID remain hobbled by these symptoms three months later."

Even if you do recover with no discernible damage to your body, there are people who maintain symptoms for months afterwards. There are reports of some people having 103+ degree fevers for weeks on end after catching it.

Morbidity of the virus is decreasing, and with the vaccine in full swing we're getting a grip on things, but people really do downplay how serious catching the virus was.

It's not just a flu, y'all.

Do you know any?

I suppose there was that time when the US had >15% unemployment (now around 7%).

My understanding is that the life expectancy in a given year is how long the average newborn would live if the by-age mortality was the same every year was the same as this year for every age. Or in other words, if we had a pandemic like this going on all the time, life expectancy would drop by rather more than the 0.5% IFR.

It's somewhat of a lie. Slate is garbage.

But if over 80 you have a 10% chance of death and approx loss of 10 years. (These figures are old) If that continues forever ie you can get it again, then you'd lose a year.

But this might just be a theoretical numbers game, the paper -

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR10-508.pdf

BBC is a little better - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56110005

This quote stood out - "But the virus was not the only factor behind the change. The CDC also notes "increases in provisional drug overdose deaths through early 2020".ू

People put off seeking medical attention for other illnesses. Increased consumption of drugs and alcohol. Increased mental health issues including suicide. I expect that life expectancies will continue to drop.

And increased sedentarism because of lockdowns.

I doubt these things are taking into account as it's mostly speculation. I am pretty sure life expectancy had changed because excess mortality. This also doesn't really mean much for one-off events. E.g. maybe the pandemic will have prevented future pandemics' severity.

It affects things much worse beyond the age of 70.

because it is average lfe expectancy, just as infant mortality lowered it before, mass death of old people also lowers it

Because the disease came with lock-downs, economic impact and all sorts of other things that correlate with things that decrease life expectancy.

>How can we blame a >1% decrease in life expectancy on a disease which according to the CDC (for under 70's) has a <0.5% infection fatality rate?

Your question, as you phrased it, is nonsense, because those are wildly different units. Therefore, comparing 0.5% of one unit to 1% of another unit is meaningless.

Life expectancy is measured in years.

Infection fatality rate is measured in deaths per case.

Depending on how life expectancy is calculated even a slight increase in deaths may skew the formula. Because the formula might essentially assume that same amount of deaths that have happened this year will continue to happen in all the following years, when in reality it is not that and it may even likely be less.

There was this concept of longevity escape velocity where the life expectancy continually increases by one year every year.

Could there be the inverse phenomenon? A crash where life expectancy loses a year every year? What would that look like on the age pyramid?

From the article:

> New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thursday showed that life expectancy in the U.S. dropped by a full year in first half of 2020, yet another reminder of the devastating toll Covid-19 has exacted.

Because this is attributed to Covid-19, this sharp drop will (hopefully) not impact life expectancy for years to come.

Covid-19 seems to have long term impact on lungs and general health, so this impact might still linger for years to come.

Yea this is a worry of mine since I already have reduced lung capacity, but the long-term effects seem to be less widespread.

Really interesting that we're able to make these long-term projections based on 6 months of extremely heterogenous data. Regardless, I don't think anyone would argue that the downstream effects of Covid (both known and unknown) will impact long-term health.

Squashes the pyramid

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