The west virginia->smoking->nicotine->no parkinsons link seems apparent. High lung disease though.
West Virginia is also coal-mining territory, for what that's worth.
Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized
41–50 of 99 posts
Re: Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized
#42Why is there such a high rate of Alzheimer in Washington state? There may be something to discover there related to its causes.
It does seem like quite an outlier. I found another article that mentions it and splits it by county. http://socialcapitalreview.org/washington-tops-u-s-in-12-yea... It looks like a problem in the western part of the state, but I don't see any suggestion of why that is. *Correction: Meant county instead of country.
You mean by county, I presume.
I would also be interested in county data, if only because upstate New York and New York City are essentially two completely different places :P
Re: Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized
#43How did you incorporate data from Washington DC into this? I can almost guarantee that the reason Maryland has such a high rate on the HIV/AIDS chart is because of the District, and its outlying areas (Prince George's County, Anacostia, etc.)
Re: Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized
#44One interesting thing I learned from this is how highly correlated mortality from heart disease and cancer are. They're quite different types of disease, but perhaps what they have in common is that they're diseases of civilization in the sense of being caused by de facto "toxins" (I don't mean this literally) of industrialized life like processed foods, lack of exercise, cigarettes, etc. Is there local data about po…
cancer and blood flow are very closely related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiogenesis
Re: Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized
#45How did you incorporate data from Washington DC into this? I can almost guarantee that the reason Maryland has such a high rate on the HIV/AIDS chart is because of the District, and its outlying areas (Prince George's County, Anacostia, etc.)
I didn't include DC data. It does exist if you reference the data PDF put out by the CDC.
I originally had included DC but it's a major outlier since it's almost entirely urban. It's also not a state and doesn't visualize well because of its size, so it's not in the csv I used.
Re: Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized
#46How did you incorporate data from Washington DC into this? I can almost guarantee that the reason Maryland has such a high rate on the HIV/AIDS chart is because of the District, and its outlying areas (Prince George's County, Anacostia, etc.)
What about Baltimore?
Re: Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized
#47One interesting thing I learned from this is how highly correlated mortality from heart disease and cancer are. They're quite different types of disease, but perhaps what they have in common is that they're diseases of civilization in the sense of being caused by de facto "toxins" (I don't mean this literally) of industrialized life like processed foods, lack of exercise, cigarettes, etc. Is there local data about po…
PG, what did you think of that "Can Google Solve Death?" Time magazine cover story from a month ago?:
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2152422...
or Google's project Calico in general?:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/03/tech/innovation/google-calico-...
Re: Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Access to firearms may play some part, but the rates of death due to firearm injury is high in the South which has relatively low suicide rates. Perhaps religious/cultural attitudes play a part? That wouldn't account for Utah though.
Interestingly Alaska has the highest death rate by Firearms. Anyone can propose a rationale for that?
Guns are pretty useful in remote areas inhabited by large, aggressive animals.
Re: Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized
#49One interesting thing I learned from this is how highly correlated mortality from heart disease and cancer are. They're quite different types of disease, but perhaps what they have in common is that they're diseases of civilization in the sense of being caused by de facto "toxins" (I don't mean this literally) of industrialized life like processed foods, lack of exercise, cigarettes, etc. Is there local data about po…
Also note that strokes are highly correlated with those two most likely due to it being a consequence of cardiovascular (read: heart) disease. The concentration of heart disease/stroke mortality in that region seems to be highly correlated with obesity distribution, which isn't a surprise. Actually, the state with the highest rate of obesity [1], Mississipi, is also the one with the highest mortality due to heart disease, and 3rd highest for strokes.
As for cancer mortality, the distribution closely matches that of smoking prevalence by state, more so than the distribution for heart disease, again not a surprise [2].
What I find the most interesting, though, are the lone states that don't seem to be a part of any cluster and have a high prevalence of, like high respiratory mortality (and influenza/pneumonia) in Wyoming, or Alzheimer's in Washington and North Dakota, or high drug mortality in Arizona (and not in any of the other border states).