Life Expectancy Ticks Up in 2022

Mike Stobbe at AP:

U.S. life expectancy rose last year — by more than a year — but still isn’t close to what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2022 rise was mainly due to the waning pandemic, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers said Wednesday. But even with the large increase, U.S. life expectancy is only back to 77 years, 6 months — about what it was two decades ago.

Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live, assuming the death rates at that time hold constant. The snapshot statistic is considered one of the most important measures of the health of the U.S. population. The 2022 calculations released Wednesday are provisional, and could change a little as the math is finalized.

American Men and Life Expectancy

 A release from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

We’ve known for more than a century that women outlive men. But new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and UC San Francisco shows that, at least in the United States, the gap has been widening for more than a decade. The trend is being driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and the opioid overdose epidemic, among other factors.

In a research paper, to be published online on November 13 in JAMA Internal Medicine, the authors found the difference between how long American men and women live increased to 5.8 years in 2021, the largest it’s been since 1996. This is an increase from 4.8 years in 2010, when the gap was at its smallest in recent history.

The pandemic, which took a disproportionate toll on men, was the biggest contributor to the widening gap from 2019-2021, followed by unintentional injuries and poisonings (mostly drug overdoses), accidents, and suicide.

“There’s been a lot of research into the decline in life expectancy in recent years, but no one has systematically analyzed why the gap between men and women has been widening since 2010,” said first author Brandon Yan, a UCSF internal medicine resident physician and research collaborator at Harvard Chan School.

Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped in 2021 to 76.1 years, falling from 78.8 years in 2019 and 77 years in 2020.

The shortening lifespan of Americans has been attributed in part to so-called “deaths of despair.” The term refers to the increase in deaths from such causes as suicide, drug use disorders, and alcoholic liver disease, which are often connected with economic hardship, depression, and stress.

“While rates of death from drug overdose and homicide have climbed for both men and women, it is clear that men constitute an increasingly disproportionate share of these deaths,” Yan said.

Using data from the National Center for Health Statistics, Yan and fellow researchers from around the country identified the causes of death that were lowering life expectancy the most. Then they estimated the effects on men and women to see how much different causes were contributing to the gap.

Prior to the COVID pandemic, the largest contributors were unintentional injuries, diabetes, suicide, homicide, and heart disease.

But during the pandemic, men were more likely to die of the virus. That was likely due to a number of reasons, including differences in health behaviors, as well as social factors, such as the risk of exposure at work, reluctance to seek medical care, incarceration, and housing instability. Chronic metabolic disorders, mental illness, and gun violence also contributed.

Yan said the results raise questions about whether more specialized care for men, such as in mental health, should be developed to address the growing disparity in life expectancy.

“We have brought insights to a worrisome trend,” Yan said. “Future research ought to help focus public health interventions towards helping reverse this decline in life expectancy.”

Yan and co-authors, including senior author Howard Koh, professor of the practice of public health leadership at Harvard Chan School, also noted that further analysis is needed to see if these trends change after 2021.

“We need to track these trends closely as the pandemic recedes,” Koh said. “And we must make significant investments in prevention and care to ensure that this widening disparity, among many others, do not become entrenched.”

Alan Geller, senior lecturer on social and behavioral sciences at Harvard Chan School, was also a co-author.

“Widening Gender Gap in Life Expectancy in the US, 2010-2021,” Brandon W. Yan, Elizabeth Erias, Alan C. Geller, Donald R. Miller, Kenneth D. Kochanek, Howard K. Koh, JAMA Internal Medicine, online November 13, 2023, doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2023.6041

Behold a Pale Horse

 

Seat belts. Cigarette taxes. Public health investment.

Some lawmakers chose to back these policies. Others don’t.

Those choices along red and blue lines are shaving years off American lives.

w/ @ddiamond @dtkeating https://t.co/QJB3wadyGe

— Lauren Weber (@LaurenWeberHP) October 3, 2023

The mortality crisis has developed over decades, with early deaths an extreme manifestation of an underlying deterioration of health and a failure of the health system to respond.

Covid highlighted this for all the world to see. https://t.co/lHDJyxzH2Z

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 3, 2023

Party and Health

 Hamamsy, T., Danziger, M., Nagler, J., & Bonneau, R. (2021). Viewing the US presidential electoral map through the lens of public health. PLOS ONE, 16(7), e0254001. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254001

Health, disease, and mortality vary greatly at the county level, and there are strong geographical trends of disease in the United States. Healthcare is and has been a top priority for voters in the U.S., and an important political issue. Consequently, it is important to determine what relationship voting patterns have with health, disease, and mortality, as doing so may help guide appropriate policy. We performed a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between voting patterns and over 150 different public health and wellbeing variables at the county level, comparing all states, including counties in 2016 battleground states, and counties in states that flipped from majority Democrat to majority Republican from 2012 to 2016. We also investigated county-level health trends over the last 30+ years and find statistically significant relationships between a number of health measures and the voting patterns of counties in presidential elections. Collectively, these data exhibit a strong pattern: counties that voted Republican in the 2016 election had overall worse health outcomes than those that voted Democrat. We hope that this strong relationship can guide improvements in healthcare policy legislation at the county level.

Health Misinformation

 Many posts have discussed myths and misinformation.

 Kaiser Family Foundation:

Overall, health misinformation is widely prevalent in the U.S. with 96% of adults saying they have heard at least one of the ten items of health-related misinformation asked about in the survey. The most widespread misinformation items included in the survey were related to COVID-19 and vaccines, including that the COVID-19 vaccines have caused thousands of deaths in otherwise healthy people (65% say they have heard or read this) and that the MMR vaccines have been proven to cause autism in children (65%).

Regardless of whether they have heard or read specific items of misinformation, the survey also asked people whether they think each claim is definitely true, probably true, probably false, or definitely false. For most of the misinformation items included in the survey, between one-fifth and one-third of the public say they are “definitely” or “probably true.” While the most frequently heard claims are related to COVID-19 and vaccines, the most frequently believed claims were related to guns, including that armed school police guards have been proven to prevent school shootings (60% say this is probably or definitely true), that most gun homicides in the U.S. are gang-related (43%), and that people who have firearms at home are less likely to be killed by a gun than those who do not (42%).

Combining these measures, the share of the public who both have heard each false claim and believe it is probably or definitely true ranges from 14% (for the claim that “more people have died from the COVID-19 vaccine than from the virus”) to 35% (“armed school police guards have been proven to prevent school shootings”).

Health misinformation everywhere, and most uncertain whether true or false @DrewAltman: “The public’s uncertainty leaves them vulnerable to misinformation..."

Reality: ALL DEFINITELY FALSE!

Ivermectin works? No.

Vaccines cause autism? No.

COVID vaccines cause fertility? No.… pic.twitter.com/TP27fHuWBn

— Timothy Caulfield (@CaulfieldTim) August 22, 2023

Alone

 Dana Goldstein and Robert Gebeloff at NYT:

In 1960, just 13 percent of American households had a single occupant. But that figure has risen steadily, and today it is approaching 30 percent. For households headed by someone 50 or older, that figure is 36 percent.

Nearly 26 million Americans 50 or older now live alone, up from 15 million in 2000. Older people have always been more likely than others to live by themselves, and now that age group — baby boomers and Gen Xers — makes up a bigger share of the population than at any time in the nation’s history.

The trend has also been driven by deep changes in attitudes surrounding gender and marriage. People 50-plus today are more likely than earlier generations to be divorced, separated or never married.
...
But while many people in their 50s and 60s thrive living solo, research is unequivocal that people aging alone experience worse physical and mental health outcomes and shorter life spans.
...
Compounding the challenge of living solo, a growing share of older adults — about 1 in 6 Americans 55 and older — do not have children, raising questions about how elder care will be managed in the coming decades.

Bryce Ward at WP:

According to the Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey, the amount of time the average American spent with friends was stable, at 6½ hours per week, between 2010 and 2013. Then, in 2014, time spent with friends began to decline.

By 2019, the average American was spending only four hours per week with friends (a sharp, 37 percent decline from five years before). Social media, political polarization and new technologies all played a role in the drop. (It is notable that market penetration for smartphones crossed 50 percent in 2014.)

Covid then deepened this trend. During the pandemic, time with friends fell further — in 2021, the average American spent only two hours and 45 minutes a week with close friends (a 58 percent decline relative to 2010-2013).

Similar declines can be seen even when the definition of “friends” is expanded to include neighbors, co-workers and clients. The average American spent 15 hours per week with this broader group of friends a decade ago, 12 hours per week in 2019 and only 10 hours a week in 2021.

 

One Million COVID Deaths in the US

 Carla K. Johnson at AP:

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 reached 1 million Monday, a once-unimaginable figure that only hints at the multitudes of loved ones and friends staggered by grief and frustration.

The number of dead, as tallied by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, is equivalent to that of a 9/11 attack every day for 336 days. It is roughly equal to how many Americans died in the Civil War and World War II combined. It’s as if Boston and Pittsburgh were wiped out.

“It is hard to imagine a million people plucked from this Earth,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, who leads a new pandemic center at the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, R.I. “It’s still happening and we are letting it happen.”

Three out of every four deaths were people 65 and older. More men died than women. White people made up most of the deaths overall, but Black, Latino and Native American people have been roughly twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as their white counterparts.

Australia's death rate is only one-tenth as great.  Damien Cave at NYT:

In global surveys, Australians were more likely than Americans to agree that “most people can be trusted” — a major factor, researchers found, in getting people to change their behavior for the common good to combat Covid, by reducing their movements, wearing masks and getting vaccinated. Partly because of that compliance, which kept the virus more in check, Australia’s economy has grown faster than America’s through the pandemic.

But of greater import, interpersonal trust — a belief that others would do what was right not just for the individual but for the community — saved lives. Trust mattered more than smoking prevalence, health spending or form of government, a study of 177 countries in The Lancet recently found. And in Australia, the process of turning trust into action began early.

...

During the toughest of Covid times, Australians showed that the national trait of “mateship” — defined as the bond between equal partners or close friends — was still alive and well. They saw Covid spiral out of control in the United States and Britain, and chose a different path.

Compliance rates with social distancing guidelines, along with Covid testing, contact tracing and isolation, held steady at around 90 percent during the worst early outbreaks, according to modeling from the University of Sydney. In the United States, reductions in mobility — a key measure of social distancing — were less stark, shorter and more inconsistent, based in part on location, political identity or wealth.

In Australia, rule-following was the social norm. It was Mick Fanning, a surfing superstar, who did not question the need to stay with his American wife and infant in a small hotel room for 14 days of quarantine after a trip to California. It was border officials canceling the visa of Novak Djokovic, the top male tennis player in the world, for failing to follow a Covid vaccine mandate, leading to his eventual deportation.

It was also all the Australians who lined up to get tested, who wore masks without question, who turned their phones into virus trackers with check-in apps, who set up food services for the old, infirm or poor in lockdowns, or who offered a place to stay to women who had been trapped in their homes with abusive husbands.

Abortion in Comparative Context

Abortion is becoming a much more salient political isssue.

By Miriam Berger at WP:

The leaked document indicating that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade included a claim often repeated by antiabortion advocates: that abortion rules in the United States are among the world’s most permissive.

While that is technically the case, there is much more to the story in practice.

A Mississippi law banning most abortions beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy is before the court. At the time the state set that limit in 2018, only six countries besides the United States “permit[ted] nontherapeutic or elective abortion-on-demand after the twentieth week of gestation,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in his draft opinion, quoting findings by the Mississippi state legislature.

In a footnote, Alito cites research by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, which opposes abortion rights, and a 2017 Washington Post article. He notes that two more countries have since joined that group, citing the Center for Reproductive Rights, which advocates for expanded abortion access. The list: Canada, China, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, the Netherlands, North Korea, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam.

The Post article cited in the document, and other Post reporting published more recently, found that few countries allow abortion beyond 15 weeks without restriction — but that many, especially in Europe, permit abortions beyond that cutoff under a wide range of exceptions, including mental health and economic hardship. In the United States, on the other hand, many people do not have access to abortion at any stage, due to the absence of clinics under restrictive state laws.

The world map remains murky when it comes to how countries regulate abortions beyond the first trimester of pregnancy. Overall, the global trend is shifting toward the liberalization of abortion laws, rather than the addition of restrictions.

COVID Has Infected 60% of Americans

Andrew Joseph  and Elizabeth Cooney at STAT:

Nearly 60% of people in the United States, including 3 in 4 children, have now been infected with Omicron or another coronavirus variant, data released Tuesday show.

The new findings, which go through February 2022, highlight just how widely the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus spread in the country. On Tuesday, the virus even reached into the White House, with Vice President Kamala Harris reporting that she had tested positive. She has shown no symptoms, a spokesperson said, and would work outside the White House, at her official residence, until she tested negative.

Before the Omicron variant took off in the United States in December, the portion of the population that had been infected was about 1 in 3, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

The updated figures come from a study that has been measuring the so-called seroprevalence of the coronavirus at various points throughout the pandemic. The study relies on testing blood samples from participants for particular antibodies that are generated only by an infection; they are different from the antibodies that Covid-19 vaccines elicit. This is the first time that the population seroprevalence is over 50%.

Infant Formula

 Helena Bottemiller Evich at Politico:

A sweeping recall of some of the biggest names in baby formula — including Similac — has been tied to a handful of hospitalizations, including two infant deaths. As POLITICO first reported, FDA, CDC and formula-maker Abbott were told in September about the first baby who got sick from Cronobacter sakazakii, a rare bacteria — several months before the massive product recall in mid-February. Lawmakers have begun to ask questions about the timeline of the recall.
...

In more than a decade covering food policy, I have covered countless outbreaks. I have never seen so many anecdotal and unconfirmed reports of illness that are not officially tied to the outbreak come out of the woodwork. It’s incredibly puzzling. Are parents wrongly blaming formula because they saw the recall? Or is the public health system missing cases? I am continuing to press health officials for answers.

It’s important to note that Abbott Nutrition, the formula maker, has maintained that its product has not been found to contain this rare bacteria as part of this outbreak: “The cases are under investigation and at this time the cause of the infants’ infections have not been determined,” the company said in a statement to POLITICO last week. “All infant formula products are tested for Cronobacter sakazakii, Salmonella and other pathogens and they must test negative before any product is released.” (FDA did find the bacteria in the Sturgis plant, however.)

This whole ordeal has me and a whole bunch of researchers revisiting a policy question that’s been kicked around in food safety circles for a long time: Should the government use social media as a tool to help detect or even solve foodborne illness outbreaks like this? Currently, CDC doesn’t, a spokesperson confirmed, but some local health departments have dabbled with using Yelp reviews, for example, to help detect outbreaks.

Political Geography of COVID

Bradley Jones at Pew:

During the fourth wave of the pandemic, death rates in the most pro-Trump counties were about four times what they were in the most pro-Biden counties. When the highly transmissible omicron variant began to spread in the U.S. in late 2021, these differences narrowed substantially. However, death rates in the most pro-Trump counties were still about 180% of what they were in the most pro-Biden counties throughout late 2021 and early 2022.

The cumulative impact of these divergent death rates is a wide difference in total deaths from COVID-19 between the most pro-Trump and most pro-Biden parts of the country. Since the pandemic began, counties representing the 20% of the population where Trump ran up his highest margins in 2020 have experienced nearly 70,000 more deaths from COVID-19 than have the counties representing the 20% of population where Biden performed best. Overall, the COVID-19 death rate in all counties Trump won in 2020 is substantially higher than it is in counties Biden won (as of the end of February 2022, 326 per 100,000 in Trump counties and 258 per 100,000 in Biden counties).

Partisan differences in COVID-19 death rates expanded dramatically after the availability of vaccines increased. Unvaccinated people are at far higher risk of death and hospitalization from COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and vaccination decisions are strongly associated with partisanship. Among the large majority of counties for which reliable vaccination data exists, counties that supported Trump at higher margins have substantially lower vaccination rates than those that supported Biden at higher margins.

Politics and Quack Cures

At JAMA Internal Medicine, Dr. Michael Barnett and colleagues have a research letter titled "Association of County-Level Prescriptions for Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin With County-Level Political Voting Patterns in the 2020 US Presidential Election."

Public opinion about the COVID-19 pandemic in the US is deeply divided by political affiliation,1 including beliefs about the value of ineffective2,3 COVID-19 treatments such as hydroxychloroquine sulfate, an antimalarial drug, and ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug. There is increased prescribing4 of these treatments despite evidence against their effectiveness. We hypothesized that the county-level volume of prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin—but not other, similar medications—would be associated with county-level political voting patterns in the 2020 US presidential election.

...

In 2019, prescribing of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin did not differ by county Republican vote share quartile (Figure 2). In early 2020, hydroxychloroquine prescribing volume was differentially lower in the highest Republican vote share counties vs the lowest (−25.1 new prescriptions per 100 000 enrollees in April; P < .001). However, after June 2020, coinciding with the revocation of the US Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine, prescribing volume was significantly higher in the highest vs lowest Republican vote share counties (+42.4 new prescriptions per 100 000 enrollees, P < .001), 146% higher than 2019 overall baseline prescribing volume (Figure 2).2,5,6

In December 2020, ivermectin prescribing volume was significantly higher in the highest vs lowest Republican vote share counties (+80.9 new prescriptions per 100 000 enrollees, P < .001), 964% higher than 2019 overall baseline prescribing volume (Figure 2). For both methotrexate and albendazole, we found no association between prescribing volume in 2020 and county-level Republican vote share.
Discussion

In late 2020, the number of new prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin was higher in counties with higher Republican vote share, whereas in early 2020, before revocation of the Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization, prescribing volume for hydroxychloroquine was higher in counties with a lower Republican (ie, higher Democrat) vote share. These findings were absent before the COVID-19 pandemic and for 2 control drugs.

This study has limitations. In an observational study, we could not address the causality of the association between county-level political voting patterns and prescribing of 2 ineffective COVID-19 treatments. Also, we were unable to assess the specific contribution of patient, physician, or other factors to the prescribing patterns.

These limitations notwithstanding, our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that US prescribing of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin during the COVID-19 pandemic may have been influenced by political affiliation. Because political affiliation should not be a factor in clinical treatment decisions, our findings raise concerns for public trust in a nonpartisan health care system.

Declining Trust in Scientists

From Pew:

Americans’ confidence in groups and institutions has turned downward compared with just a year ago. Trust in scientists and medical scientists, once seemingly buoyed by their central role in addressing the coronavirus outbreak, is now below pre-pandemic levels.

Overall, 29% of U.S. adults say they have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public, down from 40% who said this in November 2020. Similarly, the share with a great deal of confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests is down by 10 percentage points (from 39% to 29%), according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

The new findings represent a shift in the recent trajectory of attitudes toward medical scientists and scientists. Public confidence in both groups had increased shortly after the start of the coronavirus outbreak, according to an April 2020 survey. Current ratings of medical scientists and scientists have now fallen below where they were in January 2019, before the emergence of the coronavirus.

Scientists and medical scientists are not the only groups and institutions to see their confidence ratings decline in the last year. The share of Americans who say they have a great deal of confidence in the military to act in the public’s best interests has fallen 14 points, from 39% in November 2020 to 25% in the current survey. And the shares of Americans with a great deal of confidence in K-12 public school principals and police officers have also decreased (by 7 and 6 points, respectively).

...

Confidence in medical scientists and scientists across racial and ethnic groups plays out differently for Democrats and Republicans.

White Democrats (52%) are more likely than Hispanic (36%) and Black (30%) Democrats to say they have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in the public’s best interests. However, large majorities of all three groups say they have at least a fair amount of confidence in medical scientists.

Among Republicans and Republican leaners, 14% of White adults say they have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists, while 52% say they have a fair amount of confidence. Views among Hispanic Republicans are very similar to those of White Republicans, in contrast to differences seen among Democrats.

There are similar patterns in confidence in scientists. (However, the sample size for Black Republicans in the survey is too small to analyze on these measures.) See the Appendix for more.

The War on Dr. Fauci

Fact check: A quote tweeted by a Republican congressman to criticize Dr. Fauci came from a neo-Nazi convicted for child pornography, not Voltaire https://t.co/ASOP7JzjIy

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) January 31, 2022

Sheryl Gay Stolberg at NYT:

“Populism is essentially anti: anti-establishment, anti-expertise, anti-intellectual and anti-media,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist, adding that Dr. Fauci “is an establishment expert intellectual who is in the media.”

For the 81-year-old immunologist, a venerated figure in the world of science, it is a jarring last chapter of a government career that has spanned half a century. As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a post he has held since 1984, he has helped lead the response to various public health crises, including AIDS and Ebola, and advised eight presidents. He has never revealed a party affiliation. President George H.W. Bush once cited him as a hero.

Now, though, some voters are parroting right-wing commentators who compare Dr. Fauci to the brutal Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. Candidates in hotly contested Republican primaries like Ohio’s are trying to out-Trump one another by supplanting Speaker Nancy Pelosi with Dr. Fauci as a political boogeyman.

In Pennsylvania, Dr. Oz recently ran a Twitter ad calling for a debate — not between candidates, but between him and Dr. Fauci. In Wisconsin, Kevin Nicholson, a onetime Democrat running for governor as a conservative outsider, says Dr. Fauci “should be fired and referred to prosecutors.”

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis has released an advertisement last month telling Dr. Fauci to “pound sand” via the beach sandals the governor’s re-election campaign is now selling: “Freedom Over Fauci Flip-Flops.” Mr. DeSantis has coined a new term: “Faucism.” In Washington, lawmakers are taking aim at Dr. Fauci’s salary, finances and influence.

“I didn’t make myself a polarizing figure,” Dr. Fauci declared in an interview. “I’ve been demonized by people who are running away from the truth.”

The anti-Fauci fervor has taken its toll on his personal life; he has received death threats, his family has been harassed and his home in Washington is guarded by a security detail. His standing with the public has also suffered. In a recent NBC News Poll, just 40 percent of respondents said they trusted Dr. Fauci, down from 60 percent in April 2020.

Still, Mr. Ayres said, Dr. Fauci remains for many Americans “one of the most trusted voices regarding the pandemic.” In a Gallup poll at the end of 2021, his job approval rating was 52 percent. On a list of 10 officials, including Mr. Biden and congressional leaders, only two scored higher: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Jerome H. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Deaths: COVID and Overdose

The U.S. faces other steep disadvantages, ones that experts worry could cause additional problems. For example, many Americans have health problems like obesity and diabetes that increase the risk of severe Covid. https://t.co/Ie4YT3jLlI

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 2, 2022

Jon Kamp, Jennifer Levitz, Brianna Abbott and Paul Overberg at WSJ:

Two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, America’s death toll is closing in on one million.

Federal authorities estimate that 987,456 more people have died since early 2020 than would have otherwise been expected, based on long-term trends. People killed by coronavirus infections account for the overwhelming majority of cases. Thousands more died from derivative causes, like disruptions in their healthcare and a spike in overdoses.


Covid-19 has left the same proportion of the population dead—about 0.3%—as did World War II, and in less time.

Unlike the 1918 flu pandemic or major wars, which hit younger people, Covid-19 has been particularly hard on vulnerable seniors. It has also killed thousands of front-line workers and disproportionately affected minority populations.

It robbed society of grandparents, parents, spouses, sons and daughters, best friends, mentors, loyal employees and bosses. Those lost include a 55-year-old Rhode Island correctional officer; a 46-year-old Texas dental-office receptionist who helped care for her granddaughter; a 30-year-old Iowan who fatally overdosed; and an active 72-year-old and grandmother of 15 who was Nashville’s first female city bus driver.

“It’s catastrophic,” said Steven Woolf, director emeritus at the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “This is an enormous loss of life.”

O. Trent Hall and colleagues have an article at JAMA Pediatrics titled "Unintentional Drug Overdose Mortality in Years of Life Lost Among Adolescents and Young People in the US From 2015 to 2019."

 Over the 5-year period of this cross-sectional study, adolescents experienced nearly 200 000 YLL, and young people amassed greater than 1.25 million YLL [years of life lost]. Male adolescents and young people accounted for substantially greater unintentional drug overdose mortality (YLL and incident deaths) than female adolescents and young people. Although limited by death records potentially undercounting overdoses and a cross-sectional design insensitive to temporal relations between risk factors and deaths, our findings represent an unacceptable preventable mortality burden for adolescents and young people in the US. Prior research has identified polysubstance use, psychiatric comorbidity, and unstable housing as relevant risk factors for unintentional drug overdose in this age cohort.6 Our findings suggest that further resources are needed to mitigate these factors. The present study should inform future mortality reviews among adolescents and young people, as well as ecologic interventions involving family, school, and community, in unintentional drug overdose prevention and substance use treatment.

Unhappy Americans

The latest data on happiness from the General Social Survey is truly something else. Nothing remotely like it in the past five decades of polling. https://t.co/JZBj8H6KpR pic.twitter.com/CALnfzMV9h

— Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) January 28, 2022

The survey is not an outlier. Other data suggest increasing despair among many Americans.

Lois M. Collins at The Deseret News:

About one-third of respondents to the American Family Survey said their feelings of sadness or depression increased. Just 9% said they felt less sad or depressed between March 2020 and when the survey was fielded in late June and early July 2021. The survey questioned roughly 3,000 adults.

Nearly 1 in 4 said members of their family hadn’t gotten needed mental health care, while 20% said they didn’t get the physical care they needed.

Additionally, more than a third said they gained weight, compared to 17% who lost weight and 49% whose weight stayed the same, the survey found.

Polarization and Confidence in Doctors

Jeffrey M. Jones at Gallup:

Republicans are less likely now than they were in the past to say they are confident in the accuracy of important medical advice their doctor gives them. Currently, 60% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are confident, down from 73% in 2010 and 70% in 2002. Meanwhile, more Democrats and Democratic leaners are confident now (71%) than were in the past, especially compared with the 62% measured in 2002.

As a result, Democrats' confidence exceeds Republican confidence for the first time in Gallup's trend, though majorities of both groups remain confident.

Faulty Data About COVID

Joel Achenbach and Yasmeen Abutaleb at WP:

Data is key to an effective pandemic response — and the lack of it has hobbled the U.S. response again and again. The lack of testing and then, of standardized reporting of cases and deaths left U.S. officials slow to grasp the scale of the crisis when the virus first began to spread. Insufficient data also meant supplies arrived too late in hard-hit cities. State and federal officials made decisions about travel restrictions and reopening policies with an incomplete picture of what was happening.

Many places were forced to shut down before they had substantial outbreaks, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told The Washington Post, and when the virus finally arrived, some resisted a return to restrictions.

“Early on, CDC couldn’t even tell us how many people were being hospitalized for covid,” Gottlieb said.

Multiple factors underlie this data deficit. First and foremost: The U.S. does not have a national health system like Israel or the U.K., and in a pandemic, must rely on a vast and decentralized public health infrastructure that is notoriously underfunded and full of holes. As a result, there is no simple way to track infections or outcomes across a wide swath of the population.

Another obstacle to data aggregation may be the siloed computer systems and the self-interest of medical institutions. Some hospital systems want to hang onto their data, said Michael Kurilla, director of the division of clinical innovation at the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

“They don’t necessarily want to give up all that data because they see that as a potential future revenue stream,” Kurilla said.

The CDC compiles national statistics by collecting data from every state and locality, but these jurisdictions often have different ways of counting tests, infections and even deaths. The data may not be submitted to the CDC for days or weeks. Many smaller jurisdictions still share that data via outdated fax machines.

Firearm Injuries

 Many posts have discussed firearms and gun control.

Bryan Walsh at Axios:

A new study found health care visits for gun injuries rose sharply last year during the pandemic.

Why it matters: The new data from electronic health records helps confirm media reports and preliminary data suggesting a surge in gun violence in many cities.

By the numbers: According to data compiled by the Epic Health Research Network, firearm injuries that resulted in a documented health care visit began spiking in the late spring of 2020 and peaked in October at 73% higher than the monthly average in 2018 and 2019.
After dipping in the late fall and early winter last year — while still remaining well above pre-pandemic averages — documented firearm injury rates surged again in the spring, with June 2021 levels 64% higher than in 2019.

People of color were particularly vulnerable — firearm injury visits increased by 76% for Hispanic patients and 89% for Black patients, while rising 40% for whites.

Between the lines: The initial surge coincided with the early summer protests over police violence and with a massive increase in gun purchases.

Background: EHRN began tracking firearm injuries at the request of the Chicago HEAL Initiative, a group of health care systems dedicated to curbing violence in vulnerable Chicago neighborhoods.

Of note: Chicago has been one of the cities hardest hit by the gun violence surge, with murders up more than 50% in 2020 and on a pace to be even higher in 2021.

Mississippi Burning (With COVID)

 

"If Mississippi were its own country, you would be second in the world only to Peru in terms of deaths per capita... With all due respect, governor, your way is failing." CNN's @jaketapper presses Mississippi GOP Gov. Tate Reeves on the state's Covid-19 death rate. #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/P93FGrhroi

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) September 19, 2021

Mississippi now has the highest COVID death rate in the U.S.—and one of the highest in the world.

About 1 in every 326 Mississippi residents has died from the virus. https://t.co/G2uNIenCrl

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) September 17, 2021