U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#111

Post by californical » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 3:10 AM UTC

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #107

californical wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, we can start to treat city planning as a healthcare issue. Limit zoning restrictions that currently make driving everywhere the most convenient choice, stop all freeway expansion projects, and make as many walkable, bikeable, friendly neighborhoods as possible. If people want/need to go outside and walk or bike to accomplish their daily chores, they won’t need to think about exercise as much because it’ll ju…

People will literally rezone entire cities rather than saying we need to eat less food and workout more.

My point was that making it a personal choice seems to be failing us. We’ve been telling people to do that for decades, and they’re not — make it a societal choice so that it’s individuals are automatically enrolled in a system that promotes their health rather than forcing them to sit in a car seat for hours per week

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#112

Post by barbazoo » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 3:11 AM UTC

remarkEon wrote: post #54

midoridensha wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One of the greatest failings of our "modern" healthcare system is that there's no plan to address this crisis. Obesity is the gateway to what seems like an infinite amount of health complications What are they supposed to do? Obesity is caused by American's terrible lifestyle. Healthcare systems can only do so much to compensate for a bad lifestyle. Stop drinking alcohol, and start walking everywhere instead of driv…

>Healthcare systems can only do so much to compensate for a bad lifestyle. And this right here is my problem. Healthcare doesn't only begin when you get to the doctor or the hospital. There's no reason that healthcare officials/leaders/experts/whatever can't recommend baseline levels of fitness for Americans, and provide help for getting to that standard. I don't know, maybe Healthcare plans should include subsidies…

Imagine what half the population would say if an expert or an authority started telling people to walk more, eat less and eat better.

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#113

Post by stephen_g » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 3:13 AM UTC

incompatible wrote: post #13

rayiner wrote: post #5

Less than 3 years longer than Bangladesh.

76.1 is 5 years less than males in Australia (females are another 4 years higher). Life expectancy increased in 2020/2021, as a side-effect of Covid measures, since there wasn't much actual Covid around. It will be interesting to see what happens now that Covid has been let loose. https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/life-expe...

Yeah, here is an Australia it was pretty surprising. We’d had some “horror flu seasons” over the last few years (over 1000 deaths in 2017 and about 900 in 2019), and then COVID hit and we managed to stay mostly on top of that, as well as the travel restrictions and lockdowns working so well that there was only 36 flu deaths in 2020 and none in 2021. For 2021 we actually had negative excess deaths.

Since then we dropped basically all restrictions and have had 14,000 COVID deaths (all mostly this year, we had about 2,200 from the start of the pandemic to the end of 2021) which weirdly aren’t talked about in the media at all, whereas you’d hear about the daily death count every day during outbreaks in 2020 and 2021…

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#114

Post by barbazoo » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 3:13 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #56

remarkEon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hear, hear. One of the greatest failings of our "modern" healthcare system is that there's no plan to address this crisis. Obesity is the gateway to what seems like an infinite amount of health complications - not to mention the additional burden on the health care system itself when they get sick. I fully acknowledge that it's a difficult subject, it upsets people, and it's uncomfortable. The greatest healthcare adv…

obesity isn't a crisis of the healthcare system, it's a cultural crisis at a macro level. You don't need 'healthcare advice' as if giving individual people recommendations has any meaningful impact, you need to tackle it a social level. Living designed around movement rather than cars, prices up on high calorie foods, nationwide exercise programs in schools, put a ban on all ads for sugary drinks like Singapore did,…

I'd like to see all those things.

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#115

Post by ArboriaInstitut » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 3:13 AM UTC

bglazer wrote: post #96

faddypaddy34 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain how the COVID vaccine which does not 1) Prevent becoming infected with COVID, 2) Does not prevent spreading COVID to others, 3) Does not prevent COVID symptoms is a vaccine again? Also using the CDC definition that was specifically changed because the COVID vaccine didn't meet the definition of vaccine doesn't count. Additionally how about we don't just jump to lumping huge numbers of people into out groups t…

Do you think the vaccine lowers the probability that a person will die from an infection?

Is there a recent randomized controlled trial covering the period where recent strains were dominant which I could reference in order to get an idea?

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#116

Post by nu11ptr » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 3:13 AM UTC

eric4smith wrote: post #3

Obesity. Covid literally attacks obese people. And obese people also are at huge risk. I'm overweight and I was literally frightened during covid. Now I lift weights every day and work on my diet very hard. But we are literally ignoring the elephant (literally) in the room.

It's worse than that: we are celebrating it

Now I'm not saying we need to shame anyone, but saying "healthy at any size" is a terrible lie and in the long term helps no one.

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#117

Post by morsch » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 3:16 AM UTC

fortran77 wrote: post #32

eric4smith wrote: post #3

Obesity. Covid literally attacks obese people. And obese people also are at huge risk. I'm overweight and I was literally frightened during covid. Now I lift weights every day and work on my diet very hard. But we are literally ignoring the elephant (literally) in the room.

I'm always amazed that few people want to talk about this. Early on in the pandemic, the NY Times acted shocked, shocked that 7 members of this family all died from COVID https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/nyregion/new-jersey-famil... As you said, nobody dared mention the 7 elephants in the room. In fact, the Times said: > "But the virus’s devastating toll on a single family is considered as rare as it is perplexing.…

Seven people were infected, four died.

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#118

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 3:17 AM UTC

hackerlight wrote: post #77

nishs wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sentence you’ve quoted, from the abstract of the paper, refers to the state of knowledge before this paper was written/published. The results section of the paper updates this knowledge. It says: “Compared to those with first infection, those with reinfection exhibited increased risk and excess burden of all-cause mortality, hospitalization, and at least one sequela in the acute phase and the post-acute phase of…

Hate to be that guy, but people who are susceptible to reinfection are also probably less healthy.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#119

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 3:18 AM UTC

californical wrote: post #106

zepppotemkin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be nice but I don't see that happening outside of boutique cities like bentonville you really need to start fresh or force it before hitting the inflection point

When things like tax revenue-per-acre starts adding up, it’ll also be more affordable to live in denser areas. By removing zoning restrictions, some communities will start becoming more walkable & mixed-use than others. Since it’s more cost efficient, it’ll be cheaper to own a townhome in a dense area than an equivalent townhome in a sprawling area (after the market equalizes & we can keep up with demand, because it’…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. life expectancy drops sharply, the second consecutive decline

#120

Post by barbazoo » Thu, Sep 01, 2022, 3:18 AM UTC

voidfunc wrote: post #68

Barrin92 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

obesity isn't a crisis of the healthcare system, it's a cultural crisis at a macro level. You don't need 'healthcare advice' as if giving individual people recommendations has any meaningful impact, you need to tackle it a social level. Living designed around movement rather than cars, prices up on high calorie foods, nationwide exercise programs in schools, put a ban on all ads for sugary drinks like Singapore did,…

Or you know we can just let people live and die as they want to. Inform them of the risks but we don't need to go to draconian levels to prevent this.

Do people want to be obese? I doubt it.