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Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized

matthewisabel.com

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Re: Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized

#51

Post by dubfan »

ekianjo wrote: post #38
matthewisabel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This definitely deserves some kind of investigation. There's probably something to learn from such high levels of difference in very close counties : http://socialcapitalreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Sc...

As a resident of Washington the first thing that comes to mind is the difference in climate between the west and east. The eastern part of the state is mostly semi-arid, nearly desert in some areas.

I've heard we also have one of the highest rates of multiple sclerosis in the US, but I'm having a hard time finding good data on that.

Re: Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized

#52

Post by kyro »

bra-ket wrote: post #44
pg wrote: post #2

One 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

They definitely are. Cancerous masses tend to ramp up blood vessel production because that's how they survive. In fact, there are tests, like angiography, that are done to identify areas of increased blood flow, which may indicate cancerous areas.

However, there hasn't really been a link shown between cancer and heart disease, like hypertension, atherosclerosis, heart failure, etc, -- i.e. the two diseases haven't been shown to correlate pathophysiologically. But there is data showing a correlation between chemotherapy and heart disease, which could certainly contribute to the similarity in distributions in mortality between heart disease and cancer. For instance, doxorubicin is a chemotherapeutic agent infamously known for causing dilated cardiomyopathy.

Re: Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized

#56

Post by ekianjo »

dubfan wrote: post #48
ekianjo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you saying it's more likely to commit suicide just because you own a gun ?

Re: Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized

#58

Post by tbenst »

On first glance, I was shocked by how similar it looked to the electoral map from Presidential elections. 39/50 states in this chart are the correct color for the 2012 electoral map. For fun, I then took the correlation of the mortality rate and percentage of votes for Romney for each state and got at 49% correlation.

It goes without saying that correlation != causation and I do not mean this as a political statement, rather a quantification of this curious resemblance.

Re: Show HN: Mortality Rates in the US Visualized

#59

Post by GabrielF00 »

ekianjo wrote: post #56
dubfan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns are pretty useful in remote areas inhabited by large, aggressive animals.

Are you saying it's more likely to commit suicide just because you own a gun ?

Suicide by firearm is more likely to succeed than suicide by other methods (for instance poisoning). Per the American Association of Suicidology, "if a gun is used to attempt suicide, a fatal outcome will result 78% to 90% of the time."[1] Suffocation is also very likely to succeed but poisoning results in death less than 5% of the time and falls about 25% of the time.[2] One can make an impulsive decision to commit suicide with a gun while other methods (for instance hanging) may take considerably more thought and preparation. Suicide by firearm seems to be particularly problematic for youth.

[1] - [http://www.suicidology.org/c/document_library/get_file?folde...]

[2] - http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/cas...

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