U.S. life expectancy falls for 2nd year in a row | Hacker News Reader

U.S. life expectancy falls for 2nd year in a row

npr.org

41 pointsgeox9 comments

> In contrast, the life expectancy of whites fell by about a third of a year, mostly among white men.

"So what this tells us is that this continued decline in life expectancy that we see in the second year has been carried mainly by deaths in the white population," Woolf says.

It's unclear why this happened,

It shouldn't be. Over half of all gun related deaths are white males committing suicide. Link below. Suicides increased during Covid afaik.

Toss in an increase in drugs usage during the pandemic (which leads to OD death or suicide) and the gap in question is covered.

This is the sad reality of the pandemic. While many are giving lip service to mental health, it still doesn't have a seat at the table with traditional physical health. That is, too few are willing to think outside the established Covid narrative. Meanwhile, the collateral damage adds up, but the causes ignored.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/aug/21/jason-miya...

This is somewhat of an anecdatapoint, but I remember growing up in the early 00s, an overdose was a big deal and treated with a lot of gravity. Us kids got a lot of talking to about drugs etc.

Now overdoses are just statistics, and the tent cities gain more residents every week…

While "tent cities" are growing in California, a lot has changed since the early 2000s, thanks to Oxy in the late 2000s, opioid abuse is more likely in the general population, and overdoses too with fentanyl.

Overdoses were a big deal then because they were rare; thanks to Oxy though, 1 in 40 Americans abuse opioids now, overdose deaths per year have quadrupled since 1999

https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/epidemic/index.html

This is a part of it, but quality of life in general has been on a downward trajectory for a while. These are systemic issues. Overall.

Sounds like urban shootings as well.

Suicides in the US fell, pretty consistently, throughout the pandemic.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-03/u-s-suici...

With a troubling outlier of suicides among young adults. So, no, that seems to just be your personal narrative and isn't supported by facts. That most gun deaths are suicide is pretty much irrelevant without a lot of other statistics. This could happen for many reasons. Maybe people aren't murdering each other with guns as much.

Now it could be that the youth suicide rates are out weighing the adult suicide rates. But I suspect not, as despite this uptick, youth suicides are very rare.

Except the npr article literally explains that its due to poor vaccination rates and lack of covid controls like masking?

Where does it explain? I only see some vague speculation.

Covid is the elephant in the room. But meanwhile the obesity crisis and the opioid crisis continue to worsen.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/...

100k overdose deaths, up 25% YoY. About 3/4 of those deaths are opioids, which grew by 35% and seem to account for the entirety of the rise.

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