Life expectancy for Americans born in 2021 is just 76.1 years. That’s the lowest since 1966 and the steepest decline in almost 100 years. It’s astonishing to people who closely follow these data, prompting comparisons to the drop after another pandemic: the Spanish Flu of 1918. “It’s a ridiculous decline,” Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch of CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, told STAT’s Kate Sheridan. “When I saw a 6.6 year decline over two years, my jaw dropped. … I made my staff re-run the numbers to make sure.”
Covid-19 took most of the blame, but drug overdoses and accidents also contributed. And American Indian and Alaskan Native people were the ones who experienced the precipitous drop in life expectancy that rivals the overall plunge after the Spanish Flu, going from 71.8 to 65.2 years since 2019
My father died at exactly 76 in January 2007. Maybe the human lifespan isn’t meant to be as long as we think? I can’t think of any other mammals that are comparable. Not even monkeys.
Of course women always outlive men by a at least a few years on average. About 80 or so?
My mom passed away at 76 also. My dad was 93
My grandmother (96) and great aunt (97) lived through the 1918 pandemic and got the Spanish flu. They were 12 and 18 at the time, respectively.
Interesting though that today’s teens may only live into their 70’s.
Hopefully this will be the last in the series of Covid-19 vaccines and be “the one and only” for years to come, with no more than a few modifications over time like our current flu vaccine. If it becomes an annual or semi-annual booster that’s fine with me.
Gee where have we heard this before
Jeremy Faust. Part of todays post.
The goal is to keep daycare and preschools open in the face of Covid-19. The debate centers on how to achieve that.
Strategy #1: Bury our heads in the sand and hope for the best.
Strategy #2: Implement measures that decrease Covid-19 spread.
New data published in JAMA Network Open suggests that Strategy #1 is doomed to fail and that asymptomatic testing is likely to maximize in-person care/school days by keeping our youngest children from spreading Covid-19 in “congregate” settings. That’s because in young children, researchers found no correlation between the presence of symptoms and coronavirus viral loads (higher viral loads are a good proxy for contagiousness; a correlation between symptoms and viral load was found in adults, interestingly.)
This indicates that relying on symptom screening alone would likely fail to detect outbreaks in preschools and daycares in time to stifle them. In fact, young children with asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection were found in the study to have similar viral loads as infected children with one or more reported symptoms. This means that asymptomatic cases were indeed likely causing spread in daycare and school settings during 2020-2021 (when the study was conducted), and it’s reasonable to hypothesize that things only got worse during the Omicron wave this year.
If I understand it correctly, the new Omicron booster from Moderna did not go through human trials.
It may be both pfeizer and Moderna and May be based on bidens push for the new vaccine.
Philip, life expectancy is always an average number, and as with averages there’s wide dispersion around the mean, on both tails.
What’s surprising about the life expectancy data in the U.S. is that even prior to Covid it had more or less flatlined, and now it has nosedived. All other peer nations saw a steep upward sloping curve that had outpaced the U.S. by several years, on average, by the time Covid hit. Now, the differential between the U.S. and other nations is greater.
So, while what .you say is partially true – namely, there comes a point when we just can’t live much longer – we’re really not there yet. If, say, an average French person lives 4.5 years longer than an average American that means something is profoundly wrong in the U.S. To name a few reasons besides Covid that stand out in recent years: 1. Underlying health conditions, such as diabetes; 2. Drug overdoses; 3. Murders and suicide; 4. Vehicular deaths.
You also point to a fact that has baffled scientists for centuries: Why women live longer than men? The difference is generally around 5 years, but in some countries even higher. We see with Covid, for example, that women do better than men. It’s certainly not the only disease women fare better than men with. Women are the stronger sex, not in terms of physical strength, but certainly in terms of immunology.
Thanks as always for your input Joshua. Have more men died from Covid than women?
If in fact, Biden is pushing everything forward so fast, then he and his wife should get the first doses. I may wait awhile before making a decision and ask my PCP’s advice. I do hope this is the real thing.
Are mice the same physically inside as humans?
Mice have traditionally been used in animal studies – before compounds are investigated in humans – because of a similar genetic similarity to humans.
The BA.5 booster shot will not be undergoing human testing prior to its emergency authorization. I am not thrilled with this. I’ll still get the booster in late September, along with the flu shot. I do know that influenza vaccines also don’t undergo human testing, at least not as a matter of course.
More men have died from Covid-19 than women. Far more. The death rate is 50% higher for men. That’s a staggering difference.
I’ll get flu for sure.
I will always be cautious about mRNA vaccines. We just don’t have the years of experience/knowledge that we do with standard vaccines.
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Life expectancy for Americans born in 2021 is just 76.1 years. That’s the lowest since 1966 and the steepest decline in almost 100 years. It’s astonishing to people who closely follow these data, prompting comparisons to the drop after another pandemic: the Spanish Flu of 1918. “It’s a ridiculous decline,” Bob Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch of CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, told STAT’s Kate Sheridan. “When I saw a 6.6 year decline over two years, my jaw dropped. … I made my staff re-run the numbers to make sure.”
Covid-19 took most of the blame, but drug overdoses and accidents also contributed. And American Indian and Alaskan Native people were the ones who experienced the precipitous drop in life expectancy that rivals the overall plunge after the Spanish Flu, going from 71.8 to 65.2 years since 2019
My father died at exactly 76 in January 2007. Maybe the human lifespan isn’t meant to be as long as we think? I can’t think of any other mammals that are comparable. Not even monkeys.
Of course women always outlive men by a at least a few years on average. About 80 or so?
My mom passed away at 76 also. My dad was 93
My grandmother (96) and great aunt (97) lived through the 1918 pandemic and got the Spanish flu. They were 12 and 18 at the time, respectively.
Interesting though that today’s teens may only live into their 70’s.
The new vaccine
https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1564981139923615746?s=21&t=kpEOcCLmI2XPU8xt7seitg
YAY! I’ll get mine next month if it’s available. I do hope though that there has been enough human trials.
I also should get my flu shot.
And it has been authorized.
https://twitter.com/bylenasun/status/1564985741071028226?s=21&t=OVRSnxEXS2emRRMRWqtSKQ
That didn’t work. Cdc still has to approve
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-authorizes-pfizers-modernas-updated-covid-booster-shots-rcna44825
Hopefully this will be the last in the series of Covid-19 vaccines and be “the one and only” for years to come, with no more than a few modifications over time like our current flu vaccine. If it becomes an annual or semi-annual booster that’s fine with me.
Gee where have we heard this before
Jeremy Faust. Part of todays post.
The goal is to keep daycare and preschools open in the face of Covid-19. The debate centers on how to achieve that.
Strategy #1: Bury our heads in the sand and hope for the best.
Strategy #2: Implement measures that decrease Covid-19 spread.
New data published in JAMA Network Open suggests that Strategy #1 is doomed to fail and that asymptomatic testing is likely to maximize in-person care/school days by keeping our youngest children from spreading Covid-19 in “congregate” settings. That’s because in young children, researchers found no correlation between the presence of symptoms and coronavirus viral loads (higher viral loads are a good proxy for contagiousness; a correlation between symptoms and viral load was found in adults, interestingly.)
This indicates that relying on symptom screening alone would likely fail to detect outbreaks in preschools and daycares in time to stifle them. In fact, young children with asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection were found in the study to have similar viral loads as infected children with one or more reported symptoms. This means that asymptomatic cases were indeed likely causing spread in daycare and school settings during 2020-2021 (when the study was conducted), and it’s reasonable to hypothesize that things only got worse during the Omicron wave this year.
If I understand it correctly, the new Omicron booster from Moderna did not go through human trials.
It may be both pfeizer and Moderna and May be based on bidens push for the new vaccine.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-authorize-new-covid-boosters-data-tests-people-rcna45387
I may have posted this already.
https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1565020221760385029?s=21&t=ALuc1Z9WrsqSetAmGZOCOA
Philip, life expectancy is always an average number, and as with averages there’s wide dispersion around the mean, on both tails.
What’s surprising about the life expectancy data in the U.S. is that even prior to Covid it had more or less flatlined, and now it has nosedived. All other peer nations saw a steep upward sloping curve that had outpaced the U.S. by several years, on average, by the time Covid hit. Now, the differential between the U.S. and other nations is greater.
So, while what .you say is partially true – namely, there comes a point when we just can’t live much longer – we’re really not there yet. If, say, an average French person lives 4.5 years longer than an average American that means something is profoundly wrong in the U.S. To name a few reasons besides Covid that stand out in recent years: 1. Underlying health conditions, such as diabetes; 2. Drug overdoses; 3. Murders and suicide; 4. Vehicular deaths.
You also point to a fact that has baffled scientists for centuries: Why women live longer than men? The difference is generally around 5 years, but in some countries even higher. We see with Covid, for example, that women do better than men. It’s certainly not the only disease women fare better than men with. Women are the stronger sex, not in terms of physical strength, but certainly in terms of immunology.
Thanks as always for your input Joshua. Have more men died from Covid than women?
If in fact, Biden is pushing everything forward so fast, then he and his wife should get the first doses. I may wait awhile before making a decision and ask my PCP’s advice. I do hope this is the real thing.
Are mice the same physically inside as humans?
Mice have traditionally been used in animal studies – before compounds are investigated in humans – because of a similar genetic similarity to humans.
The BA.5 booster shot will not be undergoing human testing prior to its emergency authorization. I am not thrilled with this. I’ll still get the booster in late September, along with the flu shot. I do know that influenza vaccines also don’t undergo human testing, at least not as a matter of course.
More men have died from Covid-19 than women. Far more. The death rate is 50% higher for men. That’s a staggering difference.
I’ll get flu for sure.
I will always be cautious about mRNA vaccines. We just don’t have the years of experience/knowledge that we do with standard vaccines.
C-19
9-1
ready