Largest US life expectancy drop since WW II

[jayem]

US life expectancy had generally been increasing for decades. But CDC data confirms that in 2020, it dropped 1.5 years. The largest decline since the 1940s. For Black and Hispanic Americans, the drop was 3 years. Drug overdoses (largely fentanyl related) and homicides are partly responsible. But > 70% of the decline is attributed to Covid-19. Which may also have played a role in the overdose and crime deaths.

And some people still think Covid is a hoax.

U.S. life expectancy dropped by 1.5 years in 2020, biggest drop since WWII

 

[ironbjorn]

So life expectancy isn't dropping at all. Doing absolutely dumb and fatal things that you don't have to do like getting into shootouts and/or shooting innocent people and hard drugs is unsurprisingly, ummm, fatal. And then there's that whole lab made virus mess.

 

[pitabread]

So life expectancy isn't dropping at all. Doing absolutely dumb and fatal things that you don't have to do like getting into shootouts and/or shooting innocent people and hard drugs is unsurprisingly, ummm, fatal. And then there's that whole lab made virus mess.

 

[essentialsaltes]

US life expectancy had generally been increasing for decades. But CDC data confirms that in 2020, it dropped 1.5 years.

U.S. life expectancy dropped by 1.5 years in 2020, biggest drop since WWII

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

Despite the availability of life-saving COVID-19 vaccines, so many people died in the second year of the pandemic in the U.S. that the nation's life expectancy dropped for a second year in a row last year, according to a new analysis.

The analysis of provisional government statistics found U.S. life expectancy fell by just under a half a year in 2021, adding to a dramatic plummet in life expectancy that occurred in 2020. Public health experts had hoped the vaccines would prevent another drop the following year.

Surprisingly, while the 2020 drop in life expectancy hit Blacks and Hispanics hardest, that wasn't the case in 2021, the analysis found. Life expectancy among Hispanics didn't significantly change between 2020 and 2021, and life expectancy of Blacks actually inched up slightly — by a little less than half a year.

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

 

[Aryeh Jay]

Thanks Joe.

 

[jayem]

Despite the availability of life-saving COVID-19 vaccines, so many people died in the second year of the pandemic in the U.S. that the nation's life expectancy dropped for a second year in a row last year, according to a new analysis.

There may be a silver lining. If the higher national death rate was due to vaccine deniers, that would increase the national IQ.

 

[essentialsaltes]

There may be a silver lining. If the higher national death rate was due to vaccine deniers, that would increase the national IQ.

Certainly the unvaccinated are contributing the most to the cull.

Overall article is about the vaccinated-but-not-boosted elderly starting to increase their share of deaths in recent months. So get your boosters, oldsters! Regardless, the unvaccinated still make up a majority of deaths (even though they are a minority of Americans). And their rates of death have always been much much higher than among vaccinated people.

 

[cow451]

And then there's that whole lab made virus mess.

Yes, it does seem that people who believe that are dying sooner than average.

 

[mindlight]

Certainly the unvaccinated are contributing the most to the cull.

Overall article is about the vaccinated-but-not-boosted elderly starting to increase their share of deaths in recent months. So get your boosters, oldsters! Regardless, the unvaccinated still make up a majority of deaths (even though they are a minority of Americans). And their rates of death have always been much much higher than among vaccinated people.


View attachment 315476

The cull of the stupid, i.e. anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists, by covid, actually makes some existential sense of this pandemic. But the notion that the Chinese benevolently brewed this in a lab to do the world such a favor seems less likely. Particularly since most of China is in lockdown from said virus right now.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I think the life expectancy drop is very multi-faceted.

Covid was a major contributor (if not the largest)
Suicides and substance abuse (some of which were due to covid related restrictions), also a factor

The thing to remember about "life expectancy averages" is that a "catastrophic event" can drastically shift numbers in the short term.

I suspect that with the vaccines and therapeutics available starting in 2021, we'll see that number bounce back up where it was before.

 

[mindlight]

I think the life expectancy drop is very multi-faceted.

Covid was a major contributor (if not the largest)
Suicides and substance abuse (some of which were due to covid related restrictions), also a factor

The thing to remember about "life expectancy averages" is that a "catastrophic event" can drastically shift numbers in the short term.

I suspect that with the vaccines and therapeutics available starting in 2021, we'll see that number bounce back up where it was before.

Obesity, inequality of health care provision, mental health, and economic inequality are all factors that were merely exacerbated by covid. The real reasons for low American life expectancy are rooted in dysfunctionalities in an American health care system, broken by political partisanship. Despite massive funding in the US system, this is unlikely to get fixed in the short to medium term. Europe also experienced a fall in life expectancy due to covid boosting death numbers in 2020 to 80.4 years. Now that these people are dead the numbers will get better as with the USA. But the gap between the two ( USA (77 years)) is now 3.4 years! (EDIT: 80.4-77 = 3.4 not 4.4!!)

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Obesity, inequality of health care provision, mental health, and economic inequality are all factors that were merely exacerbated by covid. The real reasons for low American life expectancy are rooted in dysfunctionalities in an American health care system, broken by political partisanship. Despite massive funding in the US system, this is unlikely to get fixed in the short to medium term. Europe also experienced a fall in life expectancy due to covid boosting death numbers in 2020 to 80.4 years. Now that these people are dead the numbers will get better as with the USA. But the gap between the two ( USA (77 years)) is now 4.4 years!

You can certainly point to healthcare inequality as a potential factor, but I don't know if it's as major of a contributor as some people think.

That's not to downplay the need for some form of healthcare reform, but the healthcare system itself is largely reactionary to problems and not addressing underlying causes.

For instance, the first item on your list (Obesity) is one of the largest contributors to poor outcomes from covid.

Having universal healthcare (while by itself presents some pretty big positives in a number of areas) isn't going to magically address that caveat of covid.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/cov...le-hospitalized-were-overweight-or-obese.html

In fact, it was the 2nd greatest predictor of poor covid outcomes (2nd only to age)...and with regards to the age predictor, most of the people in the age groups that were in that serious "age risk factor" were old enough to be covered by medicare/medicaid.

A person who weighs 300 is more susceptible to a poor health outcome to covid with or without healthcare coverage in many cases.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

Certainly the unvaccinated are contributing the most to the cull.

Overall article is about the vaccinated-but-not-boosted elderly starting to increase their share of deaths in recent months. So get your boosters, oldsters! Regardless, the unvaccinated still make up a majority of deaths (even though they are a minority of Americans). And their rates of death have always been much much higher than among vaccinated people.


View attachment 315476

From your article:

The vaccinated made up 42 percent of fatalities in January and February during the highly contagious omicron variant’s surge, compared with 23 percent of the dead in September, the peak of the delta wave, according to nationwide data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed by The Post. The data is based on the date of infection and limited to a sampling of cases in which vaccination status was known.

More vaccinated are dying, and yes, those are mostly - same as was true during the entire pandemic - the elderly and immunocompromised, mostly with multiple co-morbidities. Rather than kicking the can down the road 6 months at a time, with unknown risk, seems to make more sense to stay home for awhile if you fall into those categories.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

The cull of the stupid, i.e. anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists, by covid, actually makes some existential sense of this pandemic. But the notion that the Chinese benevolently brewed this in a lab to do the world such a favor seems less likely. Particularly since most of China is in lockdown from said virus right now.

Facts:
Who died:

"In a pandemic filled with grim statistics, one of the grimmest has gone largely unnoticed: 95 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have occurred among people who were 50 or older. This even though the majority of coronavirus cases have been reported in people under age 50.

The unnerving numbers don't end there. About 8 in 10 deaths have been among people 65 and older, according to the latest demographic data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Overall, in just a matter of months, the coronavirus has infected 9 million Americans and killed more than 229,000.

"It's devastating, what's happening,” says Sharon Inouye, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a geriatrician at Hebrew Senior Life in Boston."

Who was most highly vaccinated:
81% of people over 50 were vaccinated. 92% of those who are over 65% were vaccinated.

 

[mindlight]

Facts:
Who died:

"In a pandemic filled with grim statistics, one of the grimmest has gone largely unnoticed: 95 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have occurred among people who were 50 or older. This even though the majority of coronavirus cases have been reported in people under age 50.

The unnerving numbers don't end there. About 8 in 10 deaths have been among people 65 and older, according to the latest demographic data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Overall, in just a matter of months, the coronavirus has infected 9 million Americans and killed more than 229,000.

"It's devastating, what's happening,” says Sharon Inouye, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a geriatrician at Hebrew Senior Life in Boston."

Who was most highly vaccinated:
81% of people over 50 were vaccinated. 92% of those who are over 65% were vaccinated.

If you are trying to imply that vaccination makes little difference and that age is the key factor that would be false.

Being vaccinated reduced the probability of death in the most vulnerable age group but cannot stop you from dying if your time has come. In the lower age groups, the probability of death increases massively without vaccination.

Let me give you some interesting ones based on CDC fatality stats by age group and vaccination status:

Unvaccinated 80+ year olds are about 6.5 times more likely to die of covid than their vaccinated peers.

Unvaccinated 65-79 year olds are about 19 times more likely to die of covid than their vaccinated peers

Unvaccinated 30-49 year olds are about 25 times more likely to die of covid than their vaccinated peers and 17,000 have done so.

83% of vaccinated deaths are in the 65 plus age group. So age is the main factor there.

59% of unvaccinated deaths are in that age group with 41% (27% over 50) outside it. So being unvaccinated is a risk to younger people also

Unvaccinated people are also more likely to be spreaders killing more vulnerable people than themselves and to fall victim to the repercussions of long covid with permanent lung damage.


https://data.cdc.gov/widgets/3rge-nu2a

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

If you are trying to imply that vaccination makes little difference and that age is the key factor that would be false.

Being vaccinated reduced the probability of death in the most vulnerable age group but cannot stop you from dying if your time has come. In the lower age groups, the probability of death increases massively without vaccination.

Let me give you some interesting ones based on CDC fatality stats by age group and vaccination status:

Unvaccinated 80+ year olds are about 6.5 times more likely to die of covid than their vaccinated peers.

Unvaccinated 65-79 year olds are about 19 times more likely to die of covid than their vaccinated peers

Unvaccinated 30-49 year olds are about 25 times more likely to die of covid than their vaccinated peers and 17,000 have done so.

83% of vaccinated deaths are in the 65 plus age group. So age is the main factor there.

59% of unvaccinated deaths are in that age group with 41% (27% over 50) outside it. So being unvaccinated is a risk to younger people also

Unvaccinated people are also more likely to be spreaders killing more vulnerable people than themselves and to fall victim to the repercussions of long covid with permanent lung damage.


https://data.cdc.gov/widgets/3rge-nu2a

That's complete nonsense and unprovable that vaccination did anything at all for anyone else. They just keep repeating it ad nauseam, but since there is no control group, how would you know? I've literally read that a doctor told a woman that it was a good thing her father (hospitalized, who died of Covid) was vaccinated or it would have been worse. Worse than death?

Young people get Covid and mostly don't die (98% of them)....vaccinated or not. Old people get Covid and mostly don't die, except those with multiple co-morbidities and/or advanced age, who simply were too weak to handle one more straw on that camel's back.

That's the truth. It neither prevents transmission, or contraction.

ANYONE can spread it. All of this is well known and finally admitted by the CDC and others.

I see you posted a table instead of where you actually lifted the rhetoric above. The stats you are using are nonsense when you look at the numbers, which is why they refuse to use numbers and prefer these kind of percentage rates, which are easy to obfuscate.

It's a whole lot scarier to say one is "50% MORE LIKELY TO DIE" if they don't comply than "one additional guy might die (or not) out of a group who got covid (usually because of co-morbidities)."

Been on this merry-go-round already, but look up some of the actual numbers compared to population instead of those very scary "This percentage more likely to DIE" statements.

 

[essentialsaltes]

but since there is no control group, how would you know?

If you're looking at the vaccinated group, the control is obviously the unvaccinated group.

"Unvaccinated 80+ year olds are about 6.5 times more likely to die of covid than their vaccinated peers.

Unvaccinated 65-79 year olds are about 19 times more likely to die of covid than their vaccinated peers

Unvaccinated 30-49 year olds are about 25 times more likely to die of covid than their vaccinated peers and 17,000 have done so."

That's the truth. It neither prevents transmission, or contraction.

It certainly reduces the odds of dying of the disease.

 

[mindlight]

That's complete nonsense and unprovable that vaccination did anything at all for anyone else. They just keep repeating it ad nauseam, but since there is no control group, how would you know? I've literally read that a doctor told a woman that it was a good thing her father (hospitalized, who died of Covid) was vaccinated or it would have been worse. Worse than death?

Two groups were either vaccinated or unvaccinated. Very clear differentiation. Also, the age differentiation is quite uncontroversial. So the effect of being vaccinated or not vaccinated could be compared by age group also using these stats. So I loaded them into power BI and compared the infection rates getting the list you ridiculed but clearly did not understand.

Young people get Covid and mostly don't die (98% of them)....vaccinated or not. Old people get Covid and mostly don't die, except those with multiple co-morbidities and/or advanced age, who simply were too weak to handle one more straw on that camel's back.

You do realize that 2% of the American population runs at over 6 million people. That is a modern holocaust so not something you can just shrug off. In fact, vaccinated young people have a negligible risk while unvaccinated have a much higher risk.

That's the truth. It neither prevents transmission, or contraction. ANYONE can spread it. All of this is well known and finally admitted by the CDC and others.

Vaccination trains your body to defeat the virus and makes it more likely you will do so in a timely manner. So there is a reduced risk of contagion with vaccinated people as they present fewer manhours of the disease to others. My brother and family have had covid twice and shrugged it off in less than a week both times because vaccinated. Two other non-vaccinated members of my family died from it. Anyway, I did not focus my statistics on cases but rather on deaths where the distinction between the groups is most clear.

I see you posted a table instead of where you actually lifted the rhetoric above. The stats you are using are nonsense when you look at the numbers, which is why they refuse to use numbers and prefer these kind of percentage rates, which are easy to obfuscate.

I graphed the statistics and ran the comparisons. The infection rates are calculated based on the size of the group being tested and then how many died and then categorized by age group. This work is all done in the tables which you clearly did not read. Graphs simply illustrate the massive disparity between the fatality rates of the different groups. The surprise for me was that vaccination was so complete an answer for younger age groups and made covid really an old person thing. Basically when your ticket is up you will die and maybe today the trigger will be covid but at least vaccinated you will have done what you could. While in the case of the unvaccinated the risk was spread right across the generations and 17000 people between 30-and 49 have died because not vaccinated. That rate of death given the numbers involved was 25 times the rate of the similar unvaccinated group. In fact, the difference is so marked I have to question the honesty or indeed sanity of anyone who disputes those numbers.

It's a whole lot scarier to say one is "50% MORE LIKELY TO DIE" if they don't comply than "one additional guy might die (or not) out of a group who got covid (usually because of co-morbidities)."

Been on this merry-go-round already, but look up some of the actual numbers compared to population instead of those very scary "This percentage more likely to DIE" statements.

It seems irresponsible to push people towards death through anti-vaxxer rhetoric and makebelieve. But then maybe this pandemic is actually a cull of the stupid and the world will be better off without the morons who ignored the facts and did not play the odds.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

If you're looking at the vaccinated group, the control is obviously the unvaccinated group.

"Unvaccinated 80+ year olds are about 6.5 times more likely to die of covid than their vaccinated peers.

Unvaccinated 65-79 year olds are about 19 times more likely to die of covid than their vaccinated peers

Unvaccinated 30-49 year olds are about 25 times more likely to die of covid than their vaccinated peers and 17,000 have done so."



It certainly reduces the odds of dying of the disease.

Proof of that last statement? Because they say so? How would you know to compare how you (any particular person) would have fared without the vaccine if you got it? Or with the vaccine if you didn't? That's right. There is absolutely no way to know. That's like arguing, If i just would have flipped that coin 2 times instead of once, I would have gotten heads! Maybe. Or maybe you would get tales again. You can never know.

Again, you aren't looking at numbers, but just at the easily manipulated "100 times more likely to DIE" histrionics.

Nearly EVERY SINGLE VICTIM has co-morbidities, most of them multiple co-morbidities, which is why they were unfortunately more susceptible. About 2% (or a little under, last I looked) died. About 98% chance of living, overall.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

Two groups were either vaccinated or unvaccinated. Very clear differentiation. Also, the age differentiation is quite uncontroversial. So the effect of being vaccinated or not vaccinated could be compared by age group also using these stats. So I loaded them into power BI and compared the infection rates getting the list you ridiculed but clearly did not understand.



You do realize that 2% of the American population runs at over 6 million people. That is a modern holocaust so not something you can just shrug off. In fact, vaccinated young people have a negligible risk while unvaccinated have a much higher risk.



Vaccination trains your body to defeat the virus and makes it more likely you will do so in a timely manner. So there is a reduced risk of contagion with vaccinated people as they present fewer manhours of the disease to others. My brother and family have had covid twice and shrugged it off in less than a week both times because vaccinated. Two other non-vaccinated members of my family died from it. Anyway, I did not focus my statistics on cases but rather on deaths where the distinction between the groups is most clear.



I graphed the statistics and ran the comparisons. The infection rates are calculated based on the size of the group being tested and then how many died and then categorized by age group. This work is all done in the tables which you clearly did not read. Graphs simply illustrate the massive disparity between the fatality rates of the different groups. The surprise for me was that vaccination was so complete an answer for younger age groups and made covid really an old person thing. Basically when your ticket is up you will die and maybe today the trigger will be covid but at least vaccinated you will have done what you could. While in the case of the unvaccinated the risk was spread right across the generations and 17000 people between 30-and 49 have died because not vaccinated. That rate of death given the numbers involved was 25 times the rate of the similar unvaccinated group. In fact, the difference is so marked I have to question the honesty or indeed sanity of anyone who disputes those numbers.



It seems irresponsible to push people towards death through anti-vaxxer rhetoric and makebelieve. But then maybe this pandemic is actually a cull of the stupid and the world will be better off without the morons who ignored the facts and did not play the odds.

No, what you do NOT know is whether any individual would have fared differently with or without the vaccine. That is the relevant comparison.

If they died because they were weakened due to co-morbidities, vaccination status may well have made ZERO difference. If they lived, status may have made zero difference. You are aware that nearly everyone has contracted it by now or at least been exposed, whether or not they got ill, right? Some vaccinated had tough cases, some unvaccinated had easy cases, and everything in between.

People are not fungible cogs.

You are right that vaccinated young people - and babies - have almost zero risk, but they still are pushing the vaccine for them. That makes zero sense. People at high risk taking it makes sense. This is an INDIVIDUAL RISK situation.

I'm sorry you lost people. I suspect those who died had conditions that exacerbated it and those who didn't did not.

We had both vaccinated and unvaccinated relatives get the virus, like everyone else. All were perfectly fine, though the older ones took longer to recover, as is typical.

"Unnecessary vaxxer "rhetoric is every bit as dangerous, if we are going to hurl labels, though I would rather just discuss actual facts, and don't need to label others to do it. Over 1 million incidents, many debilitating, reported to VAERS. Thousands of young men with heart conditions. This was not handled well. People at high risk should have considered the vaccine in conjunction with their own doctors, and in consideration of their own risks, as it always has been.