America Is Suddenly Getting Healthier. No One Knows Why.
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
> gun violence,
no reference link
> drug overdoses
Reasonable reference link although the data ends at 2020.
> auto accidents
Links to an X post of IHME chart. Why not just link to the original IHME data? Data stops at 2019.
> America’s unusually short lifespans
The referenced data is "Child and Infant Mortality", and again till 2020.
> U.S. government reported that drug-overdose deaths fell 3 percent from 2022 to 2023.
Following the link to the data, each single state where there was significant drop is * as "*Underreported due to incomplete data." For example, North Carolina drug OD "dropped" 49.34% yoy. Not only that the data source has it on the top in large, framed box "Some states currently have longer than usual delays in reporting drug overdose deaths."
I really want this to be true, but after this, I am not convinced.
Growing up natively with social media seems like a very reasonable correlation for me. Your life and habits are always under a lens, self consciousness or conscientiousness make sense.
I expect lots of formal study of these phenomena in coming years. As a parent of kids 7, 13, and 16 who spends a fair bit of time around school campuses & youth sports teams, for all the whining and complaining adults do about young people, my experience is that today's youth are by far the most empathetic, compassionate and best adjusted yet. They're going to be ok (provided we can afford to educate them and then hire them into the working world).
When I was in high school ... nobody went to the gym. There weren't many gyms around, now there are a lot.
I do worry though that it might be cost prohibitive or even just limited to some social groups.
Lifting has definitely played a changing role in my life. As a kid it definitely did instill the idea of working for results. It was extremely rewarding to see that when I worked out consistently and with a plan, I was stronger than my friends who went inconsistently or with poorly planned workouts. As an adult now it's more therapeutic - so much of my day is ambiguous, out of my control, or searching for how to apply my leverage instead of actually just applying my leverage. So it's very nice to have an hour of my day where I decide what I am working towards, and be able to hit clear goals largely by putting in blind effort.
Modern gyms can be surprisingly cheap.
Gone are the days of the 1980s when the only option was $$$ for a 'health club' with squash courts and swimming pools, stuck in a year-long contract whether you went or not.
There has been a rise in 'low cost gyms' which are less of a glamorous club, and more of a warehouse with a load of free weights, treadmills and stationary bikes. Often there's barely an employee in sight. In a lot of places $25/month can get you 24-hour access - with no joining fees, and you can cancel whenever you like.
Of course it's still not as cheap as sports like running. But just because someone goes to the gym, doesn't mean they're paying $250/month.
I'm not on TikTok and generally try to avoid a lot of social media, so the uptick in gym rat lifestyle is not something I've been aware of. Certainly a good thing though and it's nice to see a whole generation not submitting themselves to permanently being on weightloss hormones or chronically obese. I'm in my mid-30s and folks in my social circle are either fit with quality fitness interlaced into their weeks or above average in weight. There's rarely an outlier from those two groups.
Obesity and lifespan are favorite topics of people lamenting America as a whole but articles like these one always avoid the elephant in the room: Obesity and lifespan are very region-specific in the United States. If you live in the south you’ll have access to some great food, but the average lifespan is substantially lower.
The decline in drug deaths could be related to a growing wariness over fentanyl. Fentanyl was popular for a while with opioid seekers who wanted the cheapest option, but many of them are sadly dying off and new drug users know better to avoid it. Most of the news reports are about accidental fentanyl contamination, but the scary reality is that fentanyl was being actively sought out by many opioid seekers.
Some of the other stats feel like a return to normalcy after the COVID strange times, which the article mentions.
All I have to offer is anecdotes, but as someone who is currently on a GLP-1 RA, when I've talked about my experience it seems like most people are totally unaware of them other than the fact that they exist. It's possible people are embarrassed to admit they're using GLP-1 RAs.
Combined with the challenge of getting insurance to cover this, it seems like most people who could benefit from these drugs are not using them. I think there's a contribution for sure, but I also see in my own life people who would previously have gotten a cheeseburger when eating out choosing a salad.
As far as drugs go, GLP-1 drugs are extremely popular for how young they are. As the article mentions, 1 in 8 people have been prescribed them at some point. Regardless of what you’ve heard personally, that’s a huge number of people! Definitely enough to start showing up as a couple points reduction in obesity rate.
I have "good" insurance that is self-funded by my employer, so no actual financial interest for the insurance company to deny claims, and it's still a battle each and every month to get it covered, while I have no problems with advanced imaging for a chronic health issue.
The common way to structure self-insured plans lets the employer and insurer split any leftover money at the end of the year.
So both your insurer and your employer have incentive to deny claims.
That said, GLP-1 drugs are far more expensive in the US than anywhere else, so it’s amazing that we get them covered so often. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why they’re so expensive. If they weren’t covered at all for obesity, their market price would drop substantially. It’s a system full of weird incentives.
These drugs are truly superb and I hope they find a way to deal with the cases of blindness it seems to trigger.
At this eating level, I need to supplement with fiber and focus on high-nutrient-density foods, including leafy greens. My doctor also suggested eating by the clock, planning small meals, and adding a good-quality multivitamin to help compensate for the deficiencies.
for obesity ozempic availability has gotten pretty good and might cut into the margins?
(+ several paragraphs with theories as to why)
This is the least surprising to me. The drop coincides with the end of lockdowns, which they don't propose as a possibility.
Counterpoint: Most of the people I know who picked up drug addictions (all who have received treatment and currently recovered) picked them up from social situations. They encountered groups where drug use was their common weekend activity and you either joined them or you weren’t included.
Being in between jobs or having a job with low demands was also an enabler of drug addiction. Idle hands and all that.
> Just having a social life will not only keep you addiction-free but also enables you to use the same substances recreationally in a healthy way
This generalization doesn’t hold at all. I haven’t heard of any addicts who became more moderate of their use of hard drugs when surrounded by other users of those hard drugs. The correlation goes the other way. Being around other users both enables and encourages more drug use.
There are plenty of people who drink alcohol around other alcohol-users and the social dynamic limits how much they drink (don't want to appear foolish or out of control around friends or coworkers, match number of drinks to the people they're with, etc).
There are also plenty of examples of people using "party drugs" on weekends socially and that those same friends are the first ones to voice concern if a person in the group starts using the drugs more often or in excess.
In many cases, it's when people switch from using drugs with friends to using them alone that is the turning point to addiction and problematic usage.
The thing is that's really something that could go in either direction. Has a lethal virus, which is still circulating widely, made deaths go up? Has the lockdown decreased driving, making road deaths fall? Has the strain on the healthcare system meant things like cancers went undiagnosed, making deaths go up? Has the fact the oldest and least healthy people died in the pandemic made post-pandemic deaths go down? Did the boredom of lockdowns drive more people to use hard drugs, making deaths go up? Did the pandemic-triggered rise in remote working let people convert their commute time into exercise time, making deaths go down? Did the pandemic, and seeing other people's response to it, lead to a rise in selfish behaviour like bad driving, making deaths go up? Did work-from-home replace unhealthy on-the-go meals with healthy home-cooked food, reducing obesity and making deaths go down?
cool it there Mr. Winter Of Death
It also seems like the declines are all from the recent COVID induced surges. Have we declined in any of those metrics from 2019 levels?
The only one really healthy related is obesity, likely from the combination of GLP-1 and COVID killing obese people.
Every decade there is a weight loss miracle cure and everytime we see an outbreak of the side effects a few years later.
So it's hard pressed to call a medication induced decline in obesity "healthy".
Anecdotally the few people I know that have experienced significant weight loss from Ozempic look anything but healthy.
https://archive.ph/L1y3R loaded but very slowly.
Health and lifespan are very probably very correlated in their readers interests.
> In a 2012 op-ed, Dickey and Rosenberg argued that the CDC should be able to research gun violence. Dickey has said that he regrets his role in stopping the CDC from researching gun violence, saying he simply didn't want to "let any of those dollars go to gun control advocacy."
Headlines are rarely about the article and more about getting you to read the article. People think of a headline as a summary but in reality it’s best looked upon as the most striking line in an article.
Which is why I as your representative will make jaywalking a felony crime. Leave our poor cars alone! They’re just commuting to work as good, honest, Christian, hard-working hunks of metal.
Was this before or after they added in all the murders that weren't reported to the FBI?
https://crimeresearch.org/2024/04/how-reliable-are-the-fbis-...
The word "announced" is a link to this [1]. I'm failing to see in that where the rate has declined. According to the "key findings" section of that document,
> From 2013–2014 through August 2021–August 2023, the age-adjusted prevalence of obesity did not change significantly, while severe obesity prevalence increased from 7.7% to 9.7%.
Later it adds,
> Changes in the prevalence of obesity and severe obesity between the two most recent survey cycles, 2017–March 2020 and August 2021–August 2023, were not significant.
Statins had a similarly large effect when they came online.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2024/12/the-kids-are-maybe-al...
Maybe that was covered in the article, but it's paywalled so I couldn't read passed the free intro paragraphs. And with such a click-baity title, I wouldn't want to anyways.
In some cases its true, others its used kinda weakly like we don't know for sure, but there are plausible theories, and in other cases its full wrong, like we do know, its just that the journalist just asked their uber driver on the way home from the bar and they didn't know so research complete go with the headline.
that will mess with averages a bit
I mean AT LEAST two million, they don't like to report covid as cause of death anymore but rather the symptoms like death from excessive pneumonia
overdose deaths
traffic fatalities
adult-obesity rate
murder rate
Our purchasing power is declining, vis a vis wages not keeping up with inflation and in some cases falling [0]. It follows that if we aren't as rich as we used to be, we're falling into less of a "rich death trap".
0 - https://moneywise.com/research/americans-purchasing-power-pl...
As always, ask FRED, not random clickbait articles. Real (which means "inflation-adjusted") median household income in the United States: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
It's been going steadily upward since 2011, and is currently, except for the 2020-22 correction the article is cherry picking.
[1] Also the headline isn't an aggregate number measuring people, it's citing "97% of professions". Wat? What does that even mean? Is there a formal list out there of all the "professions" such that you can count them all? Clearly there is not, so that number become non-falsifiable.
[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881900Q [2] https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/ [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N [4] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N