Maybe thatâs why so many districts flipped blue, deplorables canât stand themselves anymore.
This is not good. With health care getting better, life expectancy should be increasing. A life expectancy in decline shows a country in significant distress.
I was shocked in the late 90âs when Russia had a declining life expectancy. Itâs practically unheard of in developed countries.
Iâd like to believe that, but⌠No, I just canât. They love to hate, so they vote in other deplorables.
I know everyone likes to point to racism, but I keep pointing to this as the core of The Trumpers vile behavior. They are getting washed away by history, and itâs making them ugly. And desperate. And self destructive.
Technology is replacing a gazillion respectable, decent paying, low education jobs with computers. The 411 operator, the gas pump guy, the toll both gal, the people who used to make and deliver all those phone books â the list is endless. There are an equal number of new jobs being created, but they require technical training or higher education.
This is nailing the white middle and lower middle class in the US. It is natural selection at itâs ugliest, and fuels hideous right wing populists like Trump. We, as a nation, need to work like hell to get all our citizens healthy and employed. The GOP has blown it. Hereâs praying my fellow Democrats come through.
Mostly because they were drinking themselves to death.
Yes, youâre right⌠Drinking themselves to death and also drinking themselves silly and stepping in front of cars, falling off ladders and things of that nature.
Not surprising.
Hopelessness + Powerlessness = Despair.
No democracy, no justice.
I have nothing scientific to back this up, but I believe that if we were to get the kind of universal healthcare that Canada and most European countries have life expectancy would start rising tomorrow. It is not how good the healthcare is that affects these kind of stats, it is how accessible it is.
âWinningâ does not appear to be all it was cracked up to beâŚ
âŚand of course this problem just manifested itself over the last 2 years right Dems? Not under your watch right Dems? Nope itâs all Donnieâs fault right Dems? If we just get out there and vote for whatever corporate Democrat the DNC serves up for us, they will fix it right Dems?
Or is this, and President Donnie a result of the Democratic Party turning itâs back on the working class? Naw that canât be right, itâs the racism, and the misogyny, and the Russians, and hacked voting machines, and gerrymandering, and the Supreme CourtâŚbut itâs never you Dems, youâre perfect just the way you are!
People also need to take care of themselves by eating right and exercising and maintaining a healthy weight.
The Russians drank themselves to death, and now weâre drugging ourselves to death.
So much winning, right, Donnie?
Not to mention preventative care.
Itâs a social problem â social in the sense that the suicide is a person who recognizes that he/she has been disposable like a used Dixie cup. âWe donât need you any more. Get lost. Youâre on your ownâ.
They have done studies on suicide. The two constants:
- I am alone in the world. No one in the world knows what Iâm going through
- The world will be better without me
So yes, itâs a gut wrenching disconnect between an individual and society.
Thereâs a lot of factors. For instance, the number of flu deaths last year was the largest in decades (larger than the number of deaths from overdoses) and that was driven by anti-vaxxer sentiments which are themselves a subset of the anti-science know-nothings that have been growing in power and influence over the last few decades.
Before someone tries to âwell actuallyâ me about how the strain was bad and the vaccine didnât match it - the American flu shots contained vaccines for four strains of influenza, two of A and two of B. The vaccine for the dominant strain of influenza A did not match well (due to a variety of factors that I wonât go into) but they actually had it dead on for the second most common strain of flu A that was circulating, plus both dominant strains of flu B. Getting 3 of 4 strains perfect was never reported in the mass media, only the â10% match only lolâ for the dominant strain.
While it would have still been a bad year, the fact that nobody freaking got the shot (lowest percentage getting the flu shot ever) meant not only did people not get the edge taken off by that 10%, but the flu B season, which is usually a slight hill after the flu A mountain season, happened much earlier and harder than usual seasons too and there was nothing unusual about the influenza B strains. There were people dying from flu B after a bout of flu A weakened them. If theyâd have gotten the shot, they probably wouldnât have been so bad off from A and would have had immunity already to B.
And now it looks like the response to last yearâs flu season being bad amongst the masses is âlol I guess the flu shot doesnât work so I wonât get one this yearâ when the problem was no one got the shot in the first place. I saw someone wondering if the Great Filter is the Dunning-Kruger effect and Iâm starting to believe it.
Iâll be honest, I suspect this is a significant part of why people voted for Trump in 2016.
Smaller towns and rural areas have been visibly affected by drugs. Hillary ran on a broader healthcare platform. Trump focused his healthcare on the impact of drugs.
Of course, Hillaryâs solutions would actually have helped the communities suffering from drugs and mental health issues, but Trumpâs âblame Mexicans and black peopleâ was false and simplistic, but it resonated because it sounded like a solution, one which tied in well with a lot of peopleâs prejudices therefore reinforcing his simplistic and false nonsense.
Rising death rates in middle age can have a large effect on life expectancy
So can rising infant mortality. Pediatric deaths from influenza last season were the highest in over a decade. Medical care in the US gets more and more expensive, insurance covers less and less, and also people vaccinate their kids less and less for completely different stupid reasons.