321–330 of 399 posts
What corrective actions can be taken by the average American?
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…
As you can see in his chart at [1] from the same thread, drugs, violence, and accidents only explain less than 1/3 of the difference, so the rest would be mainly various disease/lifestyle and care related issues (the overwhelmingly top causes of death in the US [2]). I think those graphs are a easy to misread, the long tail of somewhat poorer results is less dramatic than that younger gap, but actually includes much…
Obesity. Americans are so obese that they don’t even recognise anymore that they are fat when they are fat. Every time US based tech people come to the UK or Europe for conferences it’s incredibly eye opening what they think is healthy and how they see themselves. Plenty of folks who think they eat and drink healthy and are in a good body condition and all I can see is a big wobbly man with barely any hair on their h…
I was with you until the hair on the head part. Do you know of any established link between balding and other factors? Is it more prevalent on either side of the pond?
It would be interesting to see a proper study of baldness by country and age over time as I'd imagine much can be put to genetics, but diet and sleep rates etc might increase the speed of hairloss, resulting in decreasing age of bald men, rather then an increasing rate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The human will always be responsible. There is no way the manufacturers are going to accept liability in case their self driving car has an accident.
I remember hearing something different. Seems like Mercedes is moving in that direction. https://insideevs.com/news/575160/mercedes-accepts-legal-res...
The solution to this is known by everyone, including those who will fain ignorance. Implement universal healthcare (including mental health), regulate guns (insurance, registration, training, buybacks, red flag laws) including banning weapons of war, build public transportation and transition away from car-mandatory living in all but the most rural areas, and push for democratically-controlled unions and worker co-op…
I happen to generally agree with you on the policies, but comments like this make it much more difficult. It’s intellectually shameful to assert up front that anyone who disagrees with your prescription for society must be just pretending. And then to go on to rant about “psychopaths” and “doom” and “taking our power back”. You contribute nothing here.
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As an affluent tech industry Australian living in the US (Bay Area) I’d say there’s very little practical difference in my standard of living here compared to back home. It’s more the poorer parts of society here where the figures quoted in the article apply and that feels just as removed from my life here as it does to you sitting in Australia. The US is a big place.
This is what pains me the most about the US. Out of sight and out of mind but these poorer parts of society represent xx millions of fellow humans. If you could have similar standard of living in Australia where the poorer parts of society perhaps have more accessible healthcare and better social safety nets, then why the hell can't we do that in the US!? (I know the answers to that question, but it just makes me sad…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As you can see in his chart at [1] from the same thread, drugs, violence, and accidents only explain less than 1/3 of the difference, so the rest would be mainly various disease/lifestyle and care related issues (the overwhelmingly top causes of death in the US [2]). I think those graphs are a easy to misread, the long tail of somewhat poorer results is less dramatic than that younger gap, but actually includes much…
That's a fair point; I was simply trying to paraphrase the FT article in pointing out the importance of "social factors" (including diet/obesity/etc. leading to cardiovascular disease) in explaining US life expectancy and picked the three examples they used. I hadn't seen the chart you linked. I still think drugs, guns, and accidents are worth specifically highlighting even if they aren't the single biggest driver of…
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…
The road deaths surprise me the most , as most American roads are big and straight and most British roads are small and squiggly!
To accommodate big cars.
Obesity. Americans are so obese that they don’t even recognise anymore that they are fat when they are fat. Every time US based tech people come to the UK or Europe for conferences it’s incredibly eye opening what they think is healthy and how they see themselves. Plenty of folks who think they eat and drink healthy and are in a good body condition and all I can see is a big wobbly man with barely any hair on their h…
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03...