It’s one thing when government raises your taxes, suffocates your business with regulations or censors your tweets. It’s far worse when government is to blame for actually shortening your life.
U.S. life expectancy dropped to 76.4 years, the lowest in 25 years, according to new federal data. Americans should be gasping. What could be more important than having the chance to live a long life?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention repeatedly has blown its responses to health killers like fentanyl, COVID and lung cancer. All the while, life expectancy gets shorter and shorter.
In 1980, Americans had one of the best life expectancies in the world. Since then, the U.S. has lost ground. People live several years longer in France, Switzerland, Italy and other highly developed countries, reaching ages 83 or 84 on average. Residents of the Czech Republic, Chile and Slovenia can expect longer lives than Americans. Even before COVID, the U.S. ranked 29th in life expectancy, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The virus merely widened an already alarming gap between the U.S. and other nations.
Now, life expectancy in these other nations is rebounding from COVID, while American lives continue to be cut short due to other causes.
Start with the failure of our government, especially the CDC, to tackle the leading cause of death among Americans ages 18 to 49: overdosing. Two-thirds of these deaths are from fentanyl.
Nearly 107,000 Americans died of overdoses in 2021, about 50% more than just two years earlier.
Where’s the campaign to combat fentanyl deaths? Over the last half-century, U.S. health agencies waged several stunningly successful media campaigns to dissuade Americans from smoking cigarettes. The CDC has done nothing like that to fight this new killer.
Blame the agency’s mission confusion. In September 2021, as overdoses soared and COVID raged, the CDC launched a campaign for “inclusive communication.” The agency instructed health care workers to avoid stigmatizing words like “illegal immigrant” and substitute “parent” for gender-tainted terms like “mother” and “father.” As if political correctness is more important than preventing deaths.
The CDC’s failed response to COVID further depressed American life expectancy. Agency head Rochelle Walensky said, “To be frank, we are responsible for some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes, from testing to data to communications.” The U.S. has had a higher per capita death rate from COVID than other developed countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Canada.
As COVID fades. the CDC’s inaction on another front — lung cancer screening — is limiting progress on life expectancy for cancer patients, where the U.S. is otherwise a leader.
Lung cancer is the No. 1 cancer killer, taking about 130,000 lives a year. That’s more than breast, prostate and colon cancer deaths combined. Because lung cancer is rarely diagnosed before it spreads, the chances of survival are an abysmal 18%.
But when lung cancer is diagnosed early with a CT chest scan, a patient has an 80% chance of living another 20 years, reports Claudia Henschke, a radiology expert at Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine in New York City. That sure beats 18%.
The scan takes 15 minutes lying flat on a table that glides in and out of the scanning machine. There’s no squeezing like with a mammogram and no yucky preparation like with a colonoscopy.
The technology is widely available, recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and covered by insurance, but few doctors know to order it, and few patients know to ask. Blame the CDC for this knowledge gap. Only 15% of Americans who need lung screening are getting it.
On Dec. 20, the White House announced a pilot project to “screen and treat” cancer. Oh, sorry, that’s not for the U.S. It’s for women in Botswana. Laughable if it weren’t so tragic.
Ten years ago, Americans were told the biggest health challenge was the uninsured. Congress passed Obamacare. Now only 9% of Americans are uninsured, but the whole nation faces the prospect of shorter life expectancy.
For those lost years, you can thank federal health officials, especially the dysfunctional CDC. Call it the Centers for Decline and Confusion.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey.
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I feel a major reason for health decline in the U.S. is the extended time for appointments and increased apathy by the health care system . I saw the ease of appointments and concern for patients decline when during the obama cartel the Medicare rules were shifted to facilitate more authority over the citizenry instead of enhancing care. At that time many of the demoralized senior physicians in our area retired. A shortage was created and appointment times extended. I have spoken to friends that say they should have a checkup for this or that but making an appointment within a reasonable time frame and having coherent results afterwards are a challenge. Due to the difficulty of timely appointments and the diminished care they decide not to bother with seeking diagnosis. Politics is cancer. Once injected into any institution it will be destine to failure. The parasite is killing the host
The “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome” jab, increased violent crime, increased fentanyl overdoses, and increased suicides brought on by lockdowns and business closures all added to this increase. Manmade disasters!
The fentanyl problem is just starting. 100k in the last year. Probably TRIPLE this year.
The CDC reports fewer than 1,000 deaths directly attributable to the vaccine, although the VAERS database can’t pinpoint an exact number. So, “SADS” doesn’t contribute to shorter longevity.
Immigrants from other nations have told me they are astonished that in the USA there are so many overweight poor persons with SNAP and EBT cards buying fast and unhealthy foods.
This is my opinion only, but I think living to 75-76 years is very good. Why should people be kept alive if they cannot enjoy life the last 10-20 years on Earth.
My great grandmother lived to a healthy 99 years old. She walked the neighborhood daily, helped my great aunt around the house, and cooked until about 98. My kids are the only people I know of that met their great, great grandma in person. My step mother is now 89 and still enjoying life and getting around on her own. I am now 66 and fully intend to live well for more than 10 more years. I take no drugs, avoid all vaccines, avoid going to the doctor as much as possible, and stay active.
Dad’s uncle Bud lived to 104 he died suddenly from a stroke. He was still driving a car and working on farm equipment at 100.
Shocking news: death jab works
That makes Bill Gates happy. He makes $$$$ off the jabs and loves that it is depopulating the world.
Doing NOTHING about the open border and the continual flow of killer drugs, is an impeachable offense. What are we waiting for?
One of the greatest predictors of longevity is the overall fitness and diet of a population. You can have all the best medical care in the world available, but if the population of a country tends to be chronically over-weight, out of shape and consuming a lot of processed foods that are unheathly at best, the end result is still going to be shorter life spans. The old saying “You are what you eat” still applies. What all the countries mentioned in this article, outside of the United States, share is the average diet is far more healthy than what most Americans consume here. People also tend to be more active physically, so they are in better shape.
What I have seen of a negative nature happening to the younger people, those under 30, in a number of the other countries mentioned is they are beginning to adopt a more Americanized lifestyle. Consuming more processed and fast foods, that are easier to prepare but far less healthy. Also video games seem to be turning a lot of young people in Europe into sedentary couch potatoes, who stare at screens all day. So if that trend continues, I would expect we’ll see life expectancy numbers to begin dropping in some European countries as well over the next decade.
Supersize replaced moderation and reliance on the magic pills that do everything for you while you sleep Laziness physical and mental is a killer and belief that modern medicine cures it all
Exactly what I was going to say. I went into the urgent care clinic today because I felt horrid and found out I had Covid after all this time. However, I had a compliment, because I wasn’t overweight, and obviously took care of myself, despite my health problems of high blood pressure, low thyroid, fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, and elevated cholesterol. They could tell I worked out everyday, and from my answers, knew I never drank alcohol or smoked. It was obvious though, that our son, brought home the COVID and he didn’t know it. He had been sick and kept coming up into my space…Other countries do have better diets than all this fast food garbage. We too, can have better food, if we grow our own gardens and even if we have our own cattle and other animals for meat. I have several friends who are doing this for meat but we seem to be the only ones who have the garden.
I agree with you 100%! When walking through our local Walmart Supercenter, it’s appalling to see what most shoppers are loading into their carts. Donuts, iced cookies, chips, soda lining the top of the cart, disgusting slabs of processed meat, an occasional Lean Cuisine…many have ZERO greens, vegetables, or milk! And this is more typical for Americans; shoppers from other countries generally eat much better than we do. Now, I confess that I’ll add crackers or chocolate now and then and bake a few times a year, but there’s far more produce, dairy, nuts, and fish in the cart. The produce section at this store actually is excellent (huge bunch of pac choi–$2.29).
I’ve grown vegetable gardens for 50 years, as my parents and grandparents did before me. I live in zone 7, so many greens survive a normal winter. This fall and early winter, though, have been 10-20 degrees below average, so I potted up many of the greens and moved them to the sunny porch. I wrapped the porch temporarily with clear plastic, so it rarely freezes, and the extra warmth moves into my home. I can pick all sorts of greens–lettuce, arugula, kale, mustard greens, Swiss chard, mini broccoli, green onions, spinach, herbs, and I even started a few pots of peas. I kept a few of this summer’s sweet bell peppers (with fruits!) in pots, which are moved into the house at night and outside in the daytime.
With Covid, we did eat more comfort foods, exercised less, and got fatter as a result. This will create a burden for our health care system, driving up costs even higher. This darn computer consumes too much of my time, but I make sure I “get physical” every day.
I hope you recover quickly, Sharon.
As a horticulturist who grows plants for a living, I agree with you. People from other countries (the “Blue Zones”) eat far better than we do. When I lived in Maryland, outside Washington, D.C., many customers, from other countries, asked me to grow certain greens and vegetables for them because what they wanted didn’t appear in our stores or markets decades ago. That’s when my diet changed to mostly plant-based, and my blood tests came back greatly improved. And I didn’t eat poorly before that!
I agree; garbage in, garbage out. Our health care costs are as high as they are partly because we’re eating ourselves to death! Prescription from Dr. Kim: eat broccoli or at least one of the brassicas every day, some raw (for the sulforaphanes) and some cooked.
Got to move to Rural area for longer life
Dump the Urban
I do live in rural area and am 83….been here for 44 years. Old lady, old house but love the area and peace and quiet.
I moved to rural NC last year, and I love it!! I plan to die here, but not for a long, long time. Bigger gardens, clean air, great friends/support system.