Guest Essay by Kip Hansen – 29 July 2021
Last week I wrote Life Expectancy Plunges! … or Does It?. That essay left two questions open and unanswered. One of my life principles is “Life is too short to fail to indulge one’s curiosity.” This follow-up satisfies my curiosity on those two points, and hopefully yours as well.
The first of the two questions was prompted by this claim in the media:
“New federal data draws one of the starkest illustrations to date of how the coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected Hispanic and Black Americans, showing that they suffered a far steeper drop in life expectancy in 2020 than white Americans.” and “From 2019 to 2020, Hispanic people experienced the greatest drop in life expectancy — three years — and Black Americans saw a decrease of 2.9 years. White people experienced the smallest decline, of 1.2 years.” [ source ] Pay attention to my added emphasis (bolding), the claim is that the coronavirus pandemic had disproportionate effect.
At the time, I said “Whether those numbers were “disproportionate” I will gladly leave up to the epidemiologists and the statisticians.” Since then, the question has disturbed my peace of mind – I find it hard to believe that a virus is smart enough (or sneaky enough) to seek out victims by race and/or ethnicity. Digging in, I found that the CDC supplies the data in the following graph:
The link under the image will lead you to the very latest data, but it will not be much different – this graph and the following data is only two days old.
| Race/Ethnicity | Percent of deaths | Count of deaths | Percent of US population |
| Hispanic/Latino | 18.6 | 78,121 | 18.45 |
| American Indian / Alaska Native, Non-Hispanic | 1.2 | 4,887 | 0.74 |
| Asian, Non-Hispanic | 3.8 | 15,998 | 5.76 |
| Black, Non-Hispanic | 13.7 | 57,442 | 12.54 |
| Native Hawaiian / Other Pacific Islander, Non-Hispanic | 0.2 | 896 | 0.182 |
| White, Non-Hispanic | 58.6 | 245,434 | 60.11 |
| Multiple/Other, Non-Hispanic | 3.8 | 15,993 | 2.22 |
The graph and underlying numbers show that for each and every racial and ethnic group the percentage of overall deaths by race/ethnicity is within a percentage point or two of the percentage of U.S. population for that group. Remarkably close for such a wide-ranging statistic that crosses all social, age, educational and economic strata.
Bottom Line: Covid Deaths in the United States are not significantly disproportionate by Race or Ethnicity.
The second issue left open and unanswered concerned whether or not people were actually living longer in the present than in the past. Friendly readers supplied various links to actuarial tables (my thanks for all the help!).
Here’s the answer in a single animated gif created from slides found in a PowerPoint presentation offered by the Society of Acutaries.
Sometimes it is easier to watch one portion of an animation at a time. For instance, on the first viewing one might just look at the overall changing shape. On the second run-through, watch the declining infant/child mortality. The lighter blue spikes are explained in the first image: (from the left) the first is Life Expectancy at Birth, Life Expectancy at 40 and Life Expectancy at 65. These march to the right indicating longer expectancy over time. You can view or download and open the animation from here. Windows Photos viewer allows you to advance one screen at a time. The overall picture appears in the last screen, repeated here:
Bottom Line: In the United States, infant and child mortality have decreased and people, in general, are living longer lives. The upper limit of life span has not moved as much but has steadily gone up over the last century.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
Just wanted to clear up these two points. The first is in contradiction to – and thoroughly debunks — normal media narrative on the “disproportionate” effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in regards to race and ethnicity. The second confirms what most of us expected – fewer babies and children die and the rest of us generally live longer.
Thanks for reading.
# # # # #
Yes, child mortality has been declining over time — in almost all countries where capitalism prevails — and life expectancy continues to increase. An exception is life expectancy in the US over the last few years. This may be partly due to increasing drug deaths results from the government making pain meds hard to get legally. It might also be due to rising obesity, although that has been happening for decades and the decline in life expectancy is very recent.
Max ==> make sure to read the original essay linked in the first sentence. LE@B and actual life spans lived are not the same thing.
Accidental Drug Overdoses (mostly fentanyl-laced street drugs) and murder are having an affect.
Yes, I understand that LE at birth differs from life span. Both have been increasing. I also agree with your point about drug overdoses. Murder is, I think, only having an effect in the last year or two.
Max ==> Murder has mostly local effects — but not in he cities you expect. See https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/murder-map-deadliest-u-s-cities/57/ (cities listed in reverse order, worst cities at the botrtrom of the article.)
Exactly the non policing would have a major effect on life expectancy of any group a young man dying in his middle and late teens in any demographic group will skew the number and considering that the homicide rate in our poor communities are not again moving off the charts you if till expect life expectancy. Those who practice violence will not live to see old age, unless they wise up fast.
Life expectancy at any age is an average. When deaths increase in an age group – making more of the individual numbers ZERO – the average, of course, goes down. For the 70+, the average life expectancy took a big hit this last year or so, and the older, the bigger the hit.
Says nothing about how much longer any individual can expect to live.
I can, and do, expect to live forever. I’m probably wrong, though.
Live forever? Jonathan Swift describes the immortal ‘struldbrugs’ of the the kingdom of Luggnagg (Gulliver’s Travels) who ostensibly :
” being born exempt from that universal calamity of human nature, have their minds free and disengaged, without the weight and depression of spirits caused by the continual apprehensions of death! “.
However ” they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive “.
” They are despised and hated by all sorts of people … were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld; and the women more horrible than the men. Besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their number of years “.
That was fiction. There is no reason to think that very long lives (or even literally immortal lives) would have to become boring. https://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2015/01/longer-lives-and-alleged-tedium-of.html
However, there would be psychological and social consequences if one were immune from death from ageing alone. If one were still susceptible to dying from falling while mountain climbing, sky diving, or similar high-risk sports, people would probably become ultra conservative. Would one be as likely to be a hero if they knew that they would probably exchange their immortality for some cause? Would people sequester themselves in their ‘castles’ to avoid physical risk? Death is the engine of evolution. We would be locked into the present stage of evolution if individuals were immortal. As much as I find dying to be an unpleasant outcome, I think that it is necessary in the greater scheme of things.
Clyde ==> “it is necessary in the greater scheme of things.” especially when taking a longer view of reality.
Max ==> Boring endless mortal existence has been a feature of literature for a long long time. Jonathan Swift is just one example.
a feature of fiction for sure, doesn’t mean that it would end up to be true if the situation were to happen in reality. After all fiction is also filled with stories of aliens coming to our planet to kill us, should an alien species ever come to our little mudball all that fiction won’t mean a hill of beans as to whether or not the aliens will be hostile to us (unless they take offense to how our stories depict them 😉 )
I’ve decided that instead of turning 70 this year, I’m going to be 68 instead, then 67 next year, and so on, with a goal of dying as young as possible, hopefully in my late thirties…
BobM ==> A worthy attempt — let me know how it turns out.
You’re in luck, Bob: Senility allows you to be anything you want.
Yeah, just look at Biden! He claims he used to drive 18 Wheeler’s, when he’s never even HELD a real job! The imagination (especially the demented ones) are an amazing thing to behold!
Merlin the Magician did that. However, he ceased to exist when he became ‘unborn.’ As long as we are bounded by birth and death, it makes little difference which end-point we approach.
Welcome to Ben Franklin’s anti-aging technique. Although, he started at a greater age.
I like that idea BobM, only I’m thinking once I age “back” to my twenties/thirties I’d like to just keep cycling through those numbers in perpetuity. Unfortunately reality doesn’t seem to like that plan.
It’s also important to understand that the hit to life expectancy from the last year is massively overstated because of the way it’s calculated. The effect assumes that the recent higher mortality rate will continue at the same level in all future years. After posting, I realized that Kip made the same point very well in another essay linked from his first paragraph.
Max ==> Yes, that is exactly correct. LE@B just doesn’t mean what it appears to mean.
In BC Canada, the median age of Covid deaths is 84. This is not going to change life expenctancy except in the 2nd decimal place. Covid was a non-pandemic.
Wow, what a difference fossil fuels made!
or washing hands. It’s actually amazing how something so simple saved so many women and children in childbirth. Ignac Semmelweis. Read his story. It’s amazing. And then compare that to everything going on now with the Climate & Covid “experts.”
Josh ==> The general acceptance of the “germ theory” in medicine was one of the greatest factors in life span extension — knowing that biological infective agents caused diseases. Bacteria, fungi, viruses, etc.
And he was mocked and ridiculed by the “consensus” of doctors at the time.
Lead a boring life and you will feel you have lived forever.
Alexy Scherbakoff ==> I have at least avoided that fate….
The other side of that coin is the old Chinese curse, “May you live an interesting life!”
Clyde ==> Don’t I know it!
Very interesting to see that “life expectancy” means something totally different from how a statistical layman understands it! Or am I alone in wrongly assuming that the term describes the age at which people typically die, i.e. the position of the peak of the Gauss-like curve in each of the slides…?
Alex ==> Read my other essay linked in the first sentence.
Nicely presented. Thank you.
rd50 ==> You are welcome.
Median age of death is a much more informative metric than the mathematically conjectured life expectancy, and what that graphic (which is very nice, by the way) tells us is that, due mainly to declines in infant mortality, the median age of death marched forward much faster than life expectancy did. More people survive to old age but old age has not been extended by a lot.
I believe the median age of death in the USA is about 83, but by eyeballing the graph it looks like the mode in the most recent data is about 85. Let’s assume that 85 is the age at which you can expect the majority of old people to die.
The oldest Baby Boomers will reach 85 in the year 2028. That means that by 2027 or so, the USA is going to experience an enormous surge in the number of annual deaths that will not abate for another 25 years. This is occurring against a background of possible continued respiratory disease outbreaks and general economic malaise that will make elder care a much shoddier and less reliable experience. The USA currently clocks about 2.8 million deaths annually. If economic conditions do not improve (and there is no reason to think that they will), it might not be out of the question to see the number of deaths rise to over 1 million per month and stay that way for several years.
The changes this will inflict upon society will be quite profound. I’m not sure what advice to offer but I think people at least need to be informed about this so that they can start making their own decisions.
Good point, as a Boomer, I never really looked much past the turn to the 21st C., an event I eagerly anticipated from my teens. Nowadays, my biggest concern is to make it to the end with my brain intact and still able to sit a horse comfortably….
Pamela Matlack-Klein ==> Me, I look to make it to the end of the day each day. Haven’t been able to sit a horse comfortably in 20 years — my “must have” is to be able to enjoy a day’s sailing (which I can still do, thankfully). Thanks for stopping by.
I never fount a horse comfortable at any age, I certainly will not be crawling up on one now at 68 and on blood thinners.
You probably had an ill-fitting saddle if you were riding someone else’s horse.
MAL ==> Horse riding is relatively dangerous when counted by Death by Domestic Animal — far more horse related deaths than dogs. It is horse riding that causes he deaths, not just the horses themselves.
Intelligent Dasein ==> Yes, I offer Age at Death as a counterpoint to Life Expectancy at Birth. (I did waste a great deal of time making the animation from PP slides…..glad you found it effective.)
Covid-19 has been sweeping off the early Boomers for the last 18 months — but is probably mostly done now.
The general economy will improve and keep getting better if governments can be prevented from continually suppressing it on the grounds of imaginary emergencies.
I think I D’s “no reason to think they will” is his assumption that Democrats have a plan to take control of the US government the way that they have the governments of the major cities and states such as Cali, NY, etc., and will succeed in doing so.
If THAT is the case, he WILL be correct. Socialism and communism are the inevitable results of the Democrat “Plan”.
I am hoping that does not happen, and that TRUMPIAN! policies become reality over the next 7 years,
We shall see.
With any luck, people will soon grow tired of the Left’s economics and throw off their ‘plans’. If so, by 2024 they should be ready to get the train back on the tracks and rolling again. We can only hope!
Many Republicans have seen Trump as an accident
Many Republicans (at least those in elective office) are RINOs
John,
the party really should just rename itself RINO. It would be more accurate.
A quadrupling of deaths seems far fetched.
Dave ==> Agree — there are no limits though when engaging in wild speculation.
Yeah, Kip. Why speculate conservatively when the skies the limit.
Apparently I’, a bit different. I’ve never seriously or repeatedly thought about how long I’ll live. I’ll know it the day I die.
On the other hand, I always greet the new day with an internal cheer. Everyday I wake up is a GOOD day.
I”ll worry about the future and the past some other time!
My morning routine: Check pulse. If its there, the day will be good.
The racial differences need to be adjust for the overall economic status of the people within that group. I’m fairly certain that COVID death rate would have a positive correlation with being less well off.
“ I’m fairly certain that COVID death rate would have a positive correlation with being less well off.”
Why do you think that?
Some things that lead to poor health are genetic, some are environmental, and some are due to personal choices and lifestyle; smoking, drinking, drug use, diet, risky behavior, etc. Without even looking I knew that smoking would be more common for people with lower incomes; I looked it up just to be sure. See for yourself: Economics of tobacco: education, income, and smoking (truthinitiative.org)
Tom ==> Poorer people, in some ethnic groups, smoke more than rich people — the same is true to educational attainment.
The reverse is true for alcohol use: “Findings have indicated that people with higher SES (socioeconomic status) may consume similar or greater amounts of alcohol compared with people with lower SES, although the latter group seems to bear a disproportionate burden of negative alcohol-related consequences.”
( source : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4872618/ )
The reasons – causes — for these factors is subject to a lot of research.
The smoking stats are fudged. My neighbour died at about 80 after struggling with COPD for the last 10 years. The doctor told him it was smoking that got him, but the fact is he did heavy labour in a limestone quarry for 30 years. In addition to the dust, the heavy machinery produces damaging infrasound that causes collagen deposition in the lungs.
https://livestream.com/itmsstudio/events/8781285
The plural of Ancedote is not data. That his particular Doctor didn’t factor in his work environment history doesn’t equate to “the smoking stats are fudged”, it just mean his particular Doctor didn’t factor in his work environment history.
I also understand that poor health not due to lifestyle choices could lead to a bad economic outcome, but it should be obvious that poor life choices would contribute to a low economic status as well as poor health.
Tom ==> Cause and effect are tricky . . . .
And,
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
― Yogi Berra
Derg ==> All health outcomes have a general relationship to economic status — with the poorer segment of society having less desirable outcomes — the reasons for this are an entire field of study.
Being overweight is highly associated with poor health in general and it’s also associated with being poor.
I think that is true, but you have to look at what is causing the person to be overweight. For some people it’s diet, and others cannot help being, say, obese. If you are obese, it’s probably going to harder to succeed in the workplace. Employers don’t want to hire people who are excessively overweight.
Scissor ==> That is generally believed to be true but is not. Obesity is associated with many adverse health outcomes, but not “overweight”.
It is beneficial for older people to be modestly overweight. I will be writing (again) on this issue soon as there is news on the topic.
While what you say is true, you have to remember, most people don’t speak in clinical terms. When a layperson says overweight, they’re not talking about having a BMI slightly higher than normal or being “modestly overweight”. They generally mean people who are significantly and noticeably overweight (ie those who would be clinically classified as obese).
John ==> Use the search here at WUWT on my name and obesity. I have written about this topic (and will be writing about it again soon).
This claim makes no sense. The graph clearly shows that COVID doesn’t discriminate based on race. What do you think “adjusting” for economic status would show? Keep in mind that while there are a larger percentage of blacks and Hispanics in the “poor” group, in absolute numbers there are more poor whites.
There is plenty of data to show that COVID morbidity is worse for blacks and Hispanics.
Tom ==> This essay concerns Death by Covid data. If you’ve got links to data on “morbidity”, such as hospitalization rates by race/ethnicity, please share them (good data is hard to come by . . .).
Tom ==> Oddly, CDC data refutes itself. See https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html
This page claims that Latinos suffer death by covid 2.3 times greater than white — yet the graph in my essay, from the CDC, shows that Latino deaths are exactly proportionate to their percentage of the general population.
I’ll have to do another essay and see if this can be sorted out.
Statistics are tricky and can be used to push agendas.
I was going to comment independently on this. At the beginning of the pandemic, there were numerous ‘news’ articles claiming that Blacks in particular were dying at a much higher rate than Whites, and it was even speculated that Vitamin D deficiencies were the reason.
Something seems wrong here with the conflicting claims.
Clyde ==> I have dug in again (somewhat against my better judgement) and have written another follow-up — will appear here or at Briggs’ blog.
I see you decided to change the goal posts…
Tom ==> Adjusting raw numbers just introduces biases — the biases of those who make the adjustments. If the racial/ethnicity chart had shown wildly disproportionate deaths, researchers would be justified in trying to figure out why since it is unlikely that the SARS coronavirus can distinguish self-identifying ethnicity.
However, the chart shows there is no disproportionality. Therefore, no adjustments are justified.
There is no doubt that economic status leads to worse health outcomes in general and would be expected affect Covid deaths as well. That would be a different graph — a different analysis — by income.
I’d say not necessarily. We know for sure, that age is a predictor of COVID mortality, so if you want to analyze by demographics, then you should first age adjust the data; no? We also know that COVID deaths are highly influenced by comorbidities, and the comorbidities will be present to a greater extent in lower income groups, and of course lower income and demographic groups also correlate. It’s probably never possible to decouple everything, but as an armchair social scientist, it makes sense to me the blacks and Hispanics would have it worse. Of course, this is music to the ears of liberals and journalists, so I would not trust them to get it straight, but in this case my thinking is in line with theirs (stopped clocks and all that).
Tom ==> ALL PROBABILITIES depend on prior assumptions. If Blacks and Hispanics are dying exactly in equal proportion to their prevalence (percentage of) in the population — then they are seeing exactly the same effect as the other groups who are also seeing the exact proportionality.
If Non-Hispanic Whites are 60% of the population and account for 60% (58.6% really) of Covid deaths, then there is no disproportionality for them. The same is true for each other racial and ethnic group, all within 1 or 2 % of their proportion of the population.
That is EQUITY.
As for Death from/with/by/maybe-associated-with Covid-19, all races and ethnicities are hitting their expected mark.
Now, if you wanted to find out something different than that, then you would have to use different metrics and calculations.
I don’t agree that probabilities depend on assumptions at all. If I flip a coin, the probability of it being heads or tails is irrelevant to any assumptions on my part, but I probably don’t understand what you are saying here.
Tom ==> Read my bit at Briggs blog on the Monty Hall problem and his response.
https://wmbriggs.com/post/36178/ and
https://wmbriggs.com/post/36296/
Ok, I remember the Monty Hall problem (but not how to work it out), but it has nothing to do with statistical probabilities of, say, someone dying from X. It is also irrelevant to the problem we have been discussing. I’m not sure why you’d think it did. Probabilities certainly do not always involve assumptions (the coin flip, for instance).
Tom ==> I won’t be able to make the point clear here in the comment section — read the two Month Hall pieces for William Briggs’ view. He wrote the book on uncertainty.
That is only true of Baysian probabilities.
Clyde ==> see the links I gave on Monty Hall.
Comparing 83% to a 100% ? I don’t know what the odds are to get the same results, or the % of errors. Which 17% has been left out and its bases.
All other variables have not been taken out of Race/Ethnicity eg age which is a big variable, location etc.
B.j. ==> You’ll have to read my essay on Cause of Death (use the search function in the right hand side bar). They use the 83% because only 83% of Death Certificates included race or ethnicity data.
I doubt very much that results of the 83% would differ from the total, if that data was available.
In this instance, we are only looking to see if Covid deaths were disproportionate by race and ethnicity — and found they were not. See the original LE@B essay (linked in the first sentence) for the graph by age.
Thanks.
Life expectancy among US citizens was already declining pre-pandemic…
One study I’ve seen ascribes 50% of the decline among white men to ‘unintentional poisoning’ i.e drug overdose.
USA is already killing itself early with drugs…
griff ==> Yes, I make this point in my original LE@B essay. In the U.S., we have a drug epidemic fueled mostly by fentanyl-laced street drugs.
(You are welcome to comment here but ONLY if you stay on topic and civil — no trolling today, please — kh)
As I always ask you, griff, if you have seen such a study, please post the link. I would be interested to read it.
As Kip commented, the US DOES have a big drug problem, thanks to China manufacturing and the Mexico/US border being used to illegally import HUGH amounts of fentanyl into this country, and the failure of major US cities to put murderers in prison and keep them their during their “productive” years.
In the case of drug and gang related murderers, I put the productive years from 15 to 55 years old.
Drake ==> I mention LE@B (prior to Covid) being dragged down by drug overdoses in my original essay. Griff is correct on this point. I provide links to back that up here ““The overall reduction [in drug overdose deaths for 2018], reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suggests some possible relief from an epidemic so severe that it has reduced life expectancy in the country.” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/upshot/opioids-overdose-deaths-rising-fentanyl.html and https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/29/upshot/fentanyl-drug-overdose-deaths.html
Thanks Kip. I will review your link.
I was just hoping griff would begin to do as MANY commenters here at WUWT do, provide links. Other than the media links to the Graniad and other leftist propaganda sources that he provides from time to time, of course
I will continue to ask, I have never (that I have seen) gotten a link or reply from griff to my requests.
You have shown how easy it is to provide a link! I usually do the searches myself when I ask griff to provide a link. You know everyone’s searches are modified by their search history, and I may never find the source griff was commenting on, and would not know I did, even if I did!
Great posts, both this and the previous one. Initiated some great comments and brought some trolls from under bridges.
Thank for all you do and post. I for one appreciate your efforts.
Drake
Kip
According to Canadian stats, BC had nearly 1.5 overdose deaths for every Covid death in the past 18 months. That is why it is a fake pandemic.
Fran ==> I am interested in opioid overdose deaths — can you supply a link to a paper or even newspaper article with that information? Thanks.
Whether your statement is true or not depends on how “life expectancy” is defined, which you didn’t bother to do. Suicide among older White men has been increasing, apparently because age-related cancers are increasing. On the other hand, there are still improvements in treating life-threatening trauma in young men, as a result of experiences on the battlefield, and improvement in treatment of middle-age cardiac events. Safety features in automobiles, such as shoulder harnesses, air bags, and ABS brakes, have improved the survival rates of driving-age people.
As Kip observed, “Statistics are tricky and can be used to push agendas.”
There is quite a bit dithering amongst psychologists and psychiatrists about how “intentional” people dying from drugs are. Many Psy’s think that in some dithered way many of the overdoses are less than “unintentional”.
Philo ==> The CDC/NHS statistic “unintentional poisoning — drug overdose” is based on the IDC codes on death certs. If there is no suicide note or other explicit indicator of suicide, coroners tend to code “accidental” to spare family feelings and facilitate life insurance claims.
Hardly anyone over 110 dies.
James Lovelock of Gaia Hypothesis fame just turned 102 on the 26th.
And Old Soldiers never die. They just fade away.
While life expectancy from birth has increased with improved standards of personal and medical care, with social progress life expectancy from conception has progressed. On one hand, on the other hand, choices forever.
From the COVID death statistics compared to the percentage of races in the population, it doesn’t look like there was any “disproportionate” effect on Hispanic people or white people, although the COVID deaths were slightly (9.3%) higher among African-Americans than their fraction of the population.
Interestingly, COVID deaths among Asian-Americans were much LESS (about 34%) than their fraction of the population. Since the virus originated in China, is it possible that Asian-Americans had more natural immunity to it than those who lived their whole lives in North America or migrated from Latin America?
Regarding the “age at death” curve by decade, there wasn’t much change between 1900 and 1940, although the two World Wars (1914-18 and 1939-1945) led to deaths of many men aged 18-30 or so at the time.
The trend that was very noticeable is the sharp drop in infant deaths and childhood (<20 years old) deaths from 1950 on. This was made possible by the development of vaccines against smallpox, polio, tuberculosis, and later measles and mumps, that used to kill a significant number of children, and these diseases are practically gone now. The development of antibiotics has also enabled people to survive severe infections that may have killed them if antibiotics were not available.
The mode of the age-at-death curve (age at which the most people died) was about 70 years in 1900, which corresponds closely with the “threescore and ten” years that the psalmist King David of ancient Israel expected to live. This has shifted upward to about 85 years by the year 2000, which is less of a shift than the “life expectancy at birth” between 1900 and 2000.
The increase in the “average age at death” since 1950 may also be partially due to the campaigns against smoking tobacco, which reduced deaths from smoking-related illnesses such as throat and lung cancer, and improved respiratory health among people in their 50s through 70s. Far fewer teens and adults are smoking now than during the 1960’s through 1980’s.
The main takeaway from this is that the development of vaccines and antibiotics have greatly reduced the death rates of young people, so that a baby born without a birth defect is practically guaranteed to live to at least age 40, unless the person dies from an accident, murder, or drug overdose. But old age will still get us later on, and what’s important is to try to have healthy diet and exercise so that the extra 15 years or so are well worth living.
SteveZ ==> “although the COVID deaths were slightly (9.3%) higher among African-Americans than their fraction of the population.” — People are easily confused by these types of statistics.
Black, Non-Hispanic == 13.7% of deaths and 12.54% of total population, which is only 1.16% off being exactly in proportion. Real population incidence figures are seldom this close.
Curious how you arrive at 9.3%. Same for your figure on Asians.
Can you explain?
Steve Z’s post got me thinking.
Correlation is not causation, something AGW warriors don’t understand BUT:
I was looking at the immigrant statistics for the US, and noted the less than 40,000/year from 1930 to 1945, then the increase to about .5 million from 1945 to 1989, then the spike since then to above a million a year, and the at first gradual reduction in the “rate of rise” in life expectancy, and now a drop.
Also, until recently, 1970, over 50%, and earlier well over 50% of immigrants were from Europe and Canada, now over 50% are from Mexico and Latin America, only 13% from E and C. How much of an effect has that had on life US expectancy?
Europe, who the booted troll from your previous post claimed was so much better than the US, has not had such a change in their nations of origin as a % of population for 50 years as has the US. I wonder what effect their open boarder policy of a few years ago, however short lived and FAR less of a % as compared to the US, will have on their life expectancy,
Years ago, late 90s I think, I was watching a show on PBS (I know, how stupid was I, and the show I am referencing was one of several that ended my viewing of PBS) when a person being interviewed was trying to ‘prove” that national health care was superior to the US system. She used an example of the average height of the population of the UK and the US. She mentioned that the UK average height was going UP, but the US height was going down, of course due to BAD healthcare. I thought that with the number of both legal and illegal immigrants from México and Central America being added to the US “population”, this “healthcare” justification was a joke. In my experience living in LV, NV, MOST Mexican and Central Americans of native descent are shorter then those of European descent, and shorter by a lot of the average US born. My son in law, whose parents are from Mexico, and all of his brothers and sisters are substantially taller than their parents who grew up in Mexico. Their mother is taller than their farther, and is of Spanish decent, the father of native descent.
I know this is just an example, and I have no link for a statistical analysis. I have research to do, but have an appointment now and must go. Sorry to post and run.
Drake
At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a poster from Germany who was extolling the virtues of German health care based on their low infection rates. I have not seen anything from him since Germany has been struggling with infections.
Steve Z took the delta of 1.16% and divided it by the 12.54% of base population. That gives you 9.25%, rounded to 9.3%. The shift of 1.16% is small in absolute terms, but larger in relative terms. He did the same for the figures for Asians.
D.J. ==> Just shows one can use valid statistical methods to provide wonky nd irrelevant results.
Kip, I don’t see that being necessarily irrelevant. If I’m black and want to know my relative risk, compared to the population at large, it would be about 10% higher than if I’m white.
D.J. ==> If CDC has just pointed out that relatively small difference — and gave data on what they thought might be the underlying causes of the difference, I would have no objection. But CDC claims is that Blacks have 2 times the risk of death from Covid . . . which is simply not true. See https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html
An older aunt, who is now deceased, once remarked to me that when she was young it was common for people to get sick in the Winter. Those who were not strong, died. Those who had stronger immune systems stayed sick (Walking Pneumonia?) until the next Summer.
Living in the age of antibiotics has been a life-saver for most of us!
“measles and mumps, that used to kill a significant number of children”
No. Those were a joke. You are peddling revisionist history.
Measles is almost never deadly for a healthy child is what doctors used to learn, before the provax demented crowd took over.
“significantly” disproportionate.
Run a 2 sample t test (if you know how).
Kevin ==> don;t confuse statistically “significant” with the real world definition.
Sorry but the proportion of ethnic deaths does not dictate the decrease in life expectancy.
It is the relative ages of the deceased. If younger Hispanics and/or African Americans are dying but proportionately fewer older ones, then life expectancy losses would be greater.
c1ue ==> And you would be correct as far as LE@B goes, and in the touted disparity in deaths by race/ethnicity. I have another follow-up coming out here or at William Briggs’ blog on that very point.
I wonder about comorbidities exhibited by general racial characteristics – things like darker skinned people having less Vitamin D, latino children having higher rates of leukemia, etc.
These type of things may affect life expectancy but may not show up in the stats.
yirgach ==> LE@B is a cumulative measure of past deaths — so all past death is taken into account, regardless of causes and underlying conditions etc. The CDC has a nearly endless collection of statistics based on death certificate data — some nly iun tabular form (spreadsheets) but all freely available.
Thanks for putting the article together!
Philo ==> My pleasure.
The animation really does make a great illustration of the point. Kudos.
John ==> Thank you (and thanks to the actuarial who made the original images). I spent an inordinate amount of time on it for just that reason — it would communicate better as an animation.
As Asians is the only significantly under-represented group, we see Yet Another Failure of White Supremacy (YAFWS).
So what you’re saying is that reduced life expectancy should translate into pension funds being distributed quicker than under the current alleged longevity strategy?
I mean: Else that money, owned by pensioneers, especially for collective pension systems, will be stolen by pension providers (funds and their owners), Authorities and perhaps even corporations?
Oddgeir