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The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

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Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#151

Post by moremetadata »

nradov wrote: post #146
whakim wrote: post #97

The original article points out that the primary difference between the US and the UK (as well as other peer countries) is that you're much more likely to die young in the US. A 5-year-old in the United States has a 4% chance of dying before age 40, whereas a 5-year-old in Australia, Austria, Canada, England and Wales, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, or Switzerland has ~1% chance of dying before age 40 (val…

Yes, there has been a huge increase in the number of accidental fentanyl poisonings. I think this is now the leading cause of accidental death among young people, surpassing even vehicle crashes. Mexican drug cartels have been manufacturing counterfeit prescription painkillers and replacing active ingredients with fentanyl. They have bad quality control and sometimes just put in too much. Fentanyl is so potent that t…

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Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#152

Post by Teever »

wkat4242 wrote: post #145
Teever wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. We should implement policies that prevent guns from getting into the hands of children, regardless of whether they're gang members or not.

That'll be very very difficult. Even very restrictive weapon ownership countries like Netherlands and Sweden have a big violent gang problem. And a policy as strict as they have is just totally unthinkable in the political reality of the US. So a policy stricter than the US can have isn't enough to solve this problem. That's why it's better to aim at reducing accidental underage gun deaths which is much more achievab…

It's so bizarre that America is the only country in the world that seems to face these kinds of problems.

As a Canadian who grew up in a household with a dozen firearms, I never once touched those firearms, and hardly ever saw them until I was taken to the range by my father and taught how to use them.

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#153

Post by makeitdouble »

PeterisP wrote: post #133
makeitdouble wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious how you isolate for race between two separate continents ?

Both USA and UK have a sizeable subpopulations of people of European, African and Asian descent, large enough to have reasonably reliable statistics on them.

I kinda expect it's just not possible for two main reasons:

- the concept of "race" ("ethnicity" would be a better word?) will vary depending on culture, and the intial split of populations + 2 centuries should be enough to bring significant divergences. When you say "asians" I'd fully expect the composition of that group to be a lot different on each sides of the pond.

- I don't expect the UK to have widely available etchnically separated data. They do check the repartition on census, but would they refer to that on death stats ? I could be wrong but that seems complicated on many aspects.

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#154

Post by drdec »

sammalloy wrote: post #26
Swenrekcah wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are getting so big that people can’t drive them. An indescribably sad statistic: In the US, a parent drives over and kills their kid in the driveway every other day [1]. All the guns also cause -a bunch of— some small kids to kill their siblings every year. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna52109

> Cars are getting so big that people can’t drive them. While controversial because car companies in the US intentionally chose to market large SUVs to the public, there is some evidence that smaller vehicles are safer and that auto manufacturers have doubled down on unsafe vehicles. Why this is the case, isn’t exactly known, but one of the theories is that bad drivers will get behind bigger cars and take more risks.…

> car companies in the US intentionally chose to market large SUVs to the public,

This didn't happen in a vacuum. Poorly written fuel efficiency regulations incentivized automakers to do this.

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#155

Post by ur-whale »

Really not surprised TBH.

Last week, I traveled to L.A. for the first time in ~ 15 years and I was very shocked to see how much everything there has degraded.

This is of course anecdotal evidence and very likely biased by my faulty memory, but still ...

The combo of the number of homeless people under West LA freeway overpasses, the quasi-perpetual gridlock even on surface roads, the dereliction of infrastructures (roads, buildings, even private single family houses in middle-class neighborhoods), the number of boarded shops in downtown Santa-Monica, and worst of all, I felt that the local where noticeably "grimmer" than I remembered them ... all of it was fairly shocking.

Really not the sweet SoCal I remembered from the nineties and aughties, and old friends I met with who stuck around confirmed that my feeling was not wrong - in spite of the boiled-frog effect of living there throughout, they felt exactly the same.

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#156

Post by grecy »

Avshalom wrote: post #125
bilbo0s wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah! Deaths by billion vehicle miles in UK - 5.2. In US - 12.5. (both have tens of thousands of KSI, but the US has over twice as many per cap. In fact, way, more KSI from car accidents than even gun related homicide in the US. I hadn't realized that!) Deaths by gun related homicide in UK - 200. In US - 20000. (Both numbers pale in comparison to motor vehicle deaths, but there are a lot more in the US. Probably to b…

Youth suicide has always been pretty bad in the US and it's getting worse https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/youth-suicide-rates-are-... That's from 2019, numbers for the last 3 years are a little harder get but like attempts went up but deaths went down at least in most places but in a couple places deaths shot up a lot? https://www.nichd.nih.gov/newsroom/news/042722-COVID-adolesc... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us…

I was floored when I met some students from NYU who explained they've installed nets in the library because there have been so many suicides from people jumping.

Yikes.

Not exactly how I remember it.. but yeah. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nyu-bobst-library-suicides-al...

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#157

Post by wizofaus »

slaw wrote: post #32
paxys wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US government spends the most in the world on subsidizing corporations for healthcare. There is nothing "socialized" about it. The public in general gets very little of that benefit. And that holds true even if you include Medicare.

I meant only Medicare and Medicaid. The US government spends on Medicare and Medicare more then any other country on healthcare.

Per capita based on those eligible? Because if so, that's not surprising, given individuals from those groups are more likely to need expensive healthcare (esp. the elderly). Whereas for countries with universal healthcare, most recipients are not likely to need to expensive treatment. If it's per capita based on total population then I agree it's crazy.

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#158

Post by grecy »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #75
legitster wrote: post #4

"1 in 25 Americans being born will not make it to their 40th birthday." Wow. Actually impressed with the analysis backing this up. If you read the entire thread, he actually covers nearly every correlating factor I could think of. And it's pretty clearly drugs, guns, suicide, and cars. (The cardio health one doesn't seem as strong). The one that is crazy to me is the uptick in driving fatalities. Cars are an order of…

>"1 in 25 Americans being born will not make it to their 40th birthday." >(The cardio health one doesn't seem as strong). Here's a bit of an anecdote, but I bet my family isn't alone in this type of story... my cousin died from cardiac arrest at age 45. Keeping the story here brief - he was a high-income business owner who got into a tough spot in his marriage and business, found himself without health insurance when…

It doesn't even have to involve death.

My buddy separated his shoulder snowboarding when he was 22, but had no health insurance because he was working at the ski resort for something like $6/hr (US Ski Resorts are legally allowed to pay below minimum wage... go figure).

So he never went to the Doctor, because he couldn't afford it. He's 41 now, and that shoulder impacts almost every day of his life.

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#159

Post by bohadi »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #39
robbiep wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven’t understood the article. The decline in life expectancy in the US is not being driven by more rapid decline in the aging population but by young people dying earlier exerting influence over the entire curve. I can assure you that the burden of age related conditions will continue to grow but that again is because the largest generation humans have ever produced is aging out. And on the most part they’re mo…

I don't think you understand the comment. If the life expectancy drops, there are fewer elderly to care for. If people don't make it to 70, you don't have to care for 70+ year Olds. It is a fair thought experiment to explore. Depending on what your priorities are, it could be optimal for everyone to die before retirement age.

>Depending on priorities, it could be optimal

what possible priorities... sounds like the humanity extincting AGI has already gotten free /s

If civilization needs to adopt such measures it must be in deep crisis.

Re: The average American has the same life expectancy as the worst part of England

#160

Post by nukeman »

sammalloy wrote: post #26
Swenrekcah wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are getting so big that people can’t drive them. An indescribably sad statistic: In the US, a parent drives over and kills their kid in the driveway every other day [1]. All the guns also cause -a bunch of— some small kids to kill their siblings every year. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna52109

> Cars are getting so big that people can’t drive them. While controversial because car companies in the US intentionally chose to market large SUVs to the public, there is some evidence that smaller vehicles are safer and that auto manufacturers have doubled down on unsafe vehicles. Why this is the case, isn’t exactly known, but one of the theories is that bad drivers will get behind bigger cars and take more risks.…

Bigger vehicles by volume are safer, as there is more space for crumple zones. Bigger vehicles by mass are more dangerous, as there is more momentum and kinetic energy involved in a collision.
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