U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
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Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#2"In this study, in which we linked U.S. mortality and election data from 2001 to 2019, people in counties that voted for Republican presidential candidates were more like to die prematurely than those in counties that voted for Democratic candidates, and the gap has grown sixfold over the last two decades. We found similar results when we looked only at counties that voted for one party’s candidate throughout that period, as well as when we used state election data for governors."
And a link to the paper ("Political environment and mortality rates in the United States, 2001-19: population based cross sectional analysis") that the article describes: https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj-2021-069308
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#3"In this study, in which we linked U.S. mortality and election data from 2001 to 2019, people in counties that voted for Republican presidential candidates were more like to die prematurely than those in counties that voted for Democratic candidates, and the gap has grown sixfold over the last two decades. We found similar results when we looked only at counties that voted for one party’s candidate throughout that pe…
Of specific note I found this quote very alarming
> There was no single cause of death driving this lethal wedge: The death rate due to all 10 of the most common causes of death has widened between Republican and Democratic areas.
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#4Isn't this basic demagoguery 101 -- attach huge social outcomes to the victory or loss of one political party?
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#5Doesn't this just reflect the class of the average voter of the two parties, ie. measuring the different socio-economic realities? Seems a bit over the top to hitch it all on ‘political environment’. I'm no expert but it feels like these MDs should have gotten a social scientist or two to co-author.
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#6Isn't this basic demagoguery 101 -- attach huge social outcomes to the victory or loss of one political party?
Demagoguery implies an appeal to emotion rather than reason. The argument presented in this articles stems from reason and is an analysis of real, verifiable data, so I'd say no.
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#7I'm not even sure why you would attempt a study like this. It purely observational driven. There is no way to gauge whether the opposite parties policies would have resulted in more/less deaths. For all we know the decision made at the time (even with deaths) was the best possible outcome.
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#8"In this study, in which we linked U.S. mortality and election data from 2001 to 2019, people in counties that voted for Republican presidential candidates were more like to die prematurely than those in counties that voted for Democratic candidates, and the gap has grown sixfold over the last two decades. We found similar results when we looked only at counties that voted for one party’s candidate throughout that pe…
Of specific note I found this quote very alarming > There was no single cause of death driving this lethal wedge: The death rate due to all 10 of the most common causes of death has widened between Republican and Democratic areas.
This shouldn't be surprising 70% of the GDP output of the USA are from counties won by Biden.
Wealthier people live longer than poor people.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/11/09/biden-v...
The current republican party provides a hate machine with no actual solutions other than tax cuts for the rich and culture war for the rubes.
All that is left for the Red counties is anger and despair delivered nightly via Fox news and the right wing lie machine.
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#9Isn't this basic demagoguery 101 -- attach huge social outcomes to the victory or loss of one political party?
Demagoguery implies an appeal to emotion rather than reason. The argument presented in this articles stems from reason and is an analysis of real, verifiable data, so I'd say no.
The article tries to come to the conclusion that correlation equals causation. The title reads "A growing gap in premature deaths along party lines underscores the collision of politics and public health" which implies politics causes premature deaths. In reality it's more likely that the average Republican voter skews both lower income and rural which is the true causation of deaths.
Re: U.S. death rates show how politics are affecting public health
#10Isn't this basic demagoguery 101 -- attach huge social outcomes to the victory or loss of one political party?
It’s not about the victory or loss of either party. It’s saying there are two Americas developing simultaneously and people in each have different health outcomes.
Are the parties causative? Or are they just the labels that we have to describe the two groups currently? We don’t know.