What the Falling U.S. Life expectancy may be telling us about the Pandemic Response

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, life expectancy fell for the second year consecutively in 2021. data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At 76.4 years for a person born in 2021, life expectancy is now the lowest it’s been in a quarter century, since 1996.

American men saw their life expectancy drop by more than eight months, while women saw it fall by seven months. The number fell in all age categories, regardless of whether they were over the age 1.

Just 47 years was the average American life expectancy at the turn of 20th century. This number rose to 68 by the middle of the century and continued to rise until 2019, the year that was the victim to the global coronavirus pandemic.

Although 2021 saw a smaller decline than 2020 (when life expectancy fell by 2 years to 77 years), the continued decline is quite different from other developed nations. bounced back The pandemic has ended.

America’s life expectancy continues to fall.

Data shows that the leading causes of death in 2020 and 2021 remained roughly the same. Levels of heart disease, cancer, and – ostensibly – COVID-19, the leading causes of death, were higher last year than in 2020.

Eight of the top ten deaths in 2021 were statistically significant, with strokes and unintentional injuries among them. Only Alzheimer’s disease and chronic lower respiratory diseases declined.

Both cirrhosis and chronic liver disease have been increasing in deaths. Professor of Family Medicine and Population Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, Dr Steven Woolf. Believes this is a reflection of the fact that many Americans turned to alcohol to ease the stresses – social, economic, and psychological – of the pandemic and its associated lockdowns.

Drug overdoses grew too. Nearly 110,000 people died last year from drug overdoses. Overdose death rates have increased 50 percent for people over age over the last two decades.

Recently, we reported how the pandemic precipitated a mental-health crisis of unprecedented scale among the nation’s Zoomers. The CDC’s data reveal death rates among young adults and children – which had been declining before the pandemic – increased.

Some commentators chose to focus on the racial disparities The data revealed some surprising results, but there are still surprises. The most striking finding was that whites experienced a greater drop in their life expectancy than those of color.

“The white population, which from a medical standpoint should not be experiencing higher death rates, did,” Dr Woolf spoke.

This could be because whites were more likely not to get vaccinated. Hispanics and black Americans were more likely to die than white Americans in the first year after the pandemic. Whites still live longer however.

The Meaning of Life (Expectancy)

Most news media outlets and health experts reacted to these new life expectancy numbers in a familiar way: they called the American healthcare system “broken” and unfit for purpose. It is obvious and well-known that the solution proposed is to continue to provide medical treatment for those groups and certain aspects of our lives that are allegedly not covered.

This is the basic story of healthcare in developed countries over the past century: the gradual medicalization of more aspects of our lives and the increasing power of the medical profession over life and death. It is not. overwhelming evidence that this process is having paradoxical effects – that it is making us sicker, not healthier – we continue to believe that it is a good thing, a very clear manifestation of capital-P Progress.

These paradoxical effects are best illustrated by the pandemic response.

Which was worse, the disease – or the cure? Many are questioning whether all the work done to defeat the disease was worthwhile. Despite the fact that COVID deaths have declined this year, there are still a lot of people who die from it. 7,000 more Americans than usual Each week, people are dying. The number of deaths in 2019 is expected to rise by 13 percent.

We should be asking hard questions, and demanding answers, not just about worrying developments like the unusual rise in deaths among young adults and children, but also about the massive – indeed, unprecedented – extension of the role of the medical establishment in governing our lives. The new medical powers that the government has claimed, including the power to confine us to our homes and force us to take largely untested medical treatments, have not been surrendered, and there is no reason to believe such powers won’t be used again. They will most likely, and sooner than you think.

We are far less healthy today than we were before the pandemic. These two facts are closely connected. We will continue to lose our freedom and our health unless we recognize this and take back control of our well-being.

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