Life expectancy in the US

 This very interesting article from Our World in Data:

Why is life expectancy in the US lower than in other rich countries? 

(Study by Max Roser)

Why do Americans have a lower life expectancy than people in other rich countries, despite paying so much more for health care?

The short summary of what I will discuss below is that Americans suffer higher death rates from smoking, obesity, homicides, opioid overdoses, suicides, road accidents, and infant deaths. In addition to this, deeper poverty and less access to healthcare mean Americans at lower incomes die at a younger age than poor people in other rich countries.

The US clearly stands out as the chart shows: Americans spend far more on health than any other country in the world, yet the life expectancy of the American population is shorter than in other rich countries that spend far less.

The chart here doesn’t just show the latest data points, but how life expectancy and health spending have changed during the last five decades. The arrows start in 1970 and connect the annual data points for both metrics, showing the change over time.

In the 1970s the US didn’t stand out at all, it does so now because life expectancy increased much more slowly than in other countries. At the same time, health spending in the U.S. increased much more rapidly, particularly since the mid-1980s. The consequence of these two exceptional developments is that the US followed the much-flatter trajectory that the chart shows.

The unequal development over recent decades led to an inequality between the US and other rich countries. In the US health spending per capita is up to four times higher, yet life expectancy is lower than in all of these countries.

The US has achieved very substantial progress in health outcomes over the last 140 years: in 1880 the life expectancy of Americans was 39 years, since then it has doubled. But this extremely positive trend has come to an end. While life expectancy for people around the world continued to increase, the life expectancy of Americans has declined since 2014. With the pandemic of 2020 – which already caused more than 225,000 deaths due to COVID-19 and 300,000 excess deaths – it is unfortunately already certain that the decline of life expectancy in the US will continue this year.1

In a word:  the triumph of neo-liberalism.   

Truly, American Exceptionalism is correct.  Just in all the wrong ways.

Shit-life syndrome

Poverty is the 4th cause of death in the US

The great share buyback scam

An opioid vaccine?

 

Opioid overdoses accounted for the majority of drug deaths in 2020. Cutting-edge research into opioid vaccines aims to address the dire situation.Max Butterworth / NBC News; Getty Images

From NBC News

The vaccination felt like most others — a slight pinprick in M.'s  upper arm, followed by the application of a Band-Aid and advice to monitor the injection site for any unusual reactions.

The vaccine, however, is unlike any other. It's not meant to protect against the coronavirus, or any germ, for that matter. 

It is meant to protect against a deadly opioid overdose.

When M. (who requested that her full name not be used to protect her identity) got the shot this Tuesday, she became just the sixth person to receive it.

"It's very powerful now that I think about it," she said of participating in the trial, just a few hours after getting the vaccine. 

The trial — the first to test the safety and potential effectiveness of an opioid vaccine in humans — is being led by Sandra Comer, a professor of neurobiology in the department of psychiatry at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Marco Pravetoni, of the University of Minnesota Medical School. 

All of the participants, including M., are in active phases of addiction and are being housed at Columbia or another clinic for 10 weeks during the study. That's because researchers must give the participants nonlethal doses of opioids, including heroin, after the experimental vaccine to see how it works.

"The principle is pretty simple," Pravetoni said. It "triggers the patient's own immune system to develop antibodies against the target."

It's the same basic idea behind all vaccines: teach the immune system to make antibodies that will target and destroy a specific invader. Covid-19 vaccines, for example, work by training a person's immune system to identify and make antibodies that target the coronavirus’s infamous spike protein.

In the Columbia trial, the vaccine is targeting a specific type of narcotic: oxycodone, an opioid used in painkillers like OxyContin.

The vaccine would not prevent cravings for the drug — it would likely be used in conjunction with medications that do — but it could serve as an added layer of protection for people at high risk, Comer said. If they end up using oxycodone, the antibodies should bind to it and prevent it from getting to the brain.

That is key in reducing overdose deaths. Opioids kill by entering the brain, triggering a person's body to slow breathing down to dangerous levels.

Drug overdoses killed a record 93,331 people in the U.S. last year alone. Opioids accounted for about 70 percent of such deaths. 

[Read more here]

USA: 17,000 a year dead from opioids

More than 70,000 Americans died from drugs in 2017. That is more than all the American soldiers killed in the entire Vietnam war.  Look at the increases from 1999-2003 to 2012-2016.  The US government is spectacularly failing its citizens.  Imagine if this was the number of deaths from terrorism.

Source: The Economist