Americans are dying and dying…and dying

Every day one hears about someone’s death. It could be a loved one, an elderly relative or a neighbor; It might be a blatant media headline about a recent mass killing or a glitching glitch; Or a stranger on the corner is killed by a hit-or-run driver or in a car accident. And the corpses pile up.

Over the past century, life expectancy in the United States has increased dramatically. In 1900 it was 46.2 years for males and 48.3 years for females. By 1950, the average life expectancy for males was 65.3 years and for females 71.1 years.

However, between 2021 and 2022, life expectancy in the United States decreased from 77.0 to 76.1 years, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics reports that this is the lowest level since 1996; For 2022, it increased to 79.05 years. In 2021, the average life expectancy for males was 73.2 years and for females 79.9 years, and by 2022, the average life expectancy for males was 73.9 years and for females 79.5.

The COVID pandemic lasted 23 months, from March 2020 to February 2022. During this period, that nation experienced what scholars refer to as “excess mortality,” meaning “the difference between expected and observed mortality in a given period…” These scholars estimated that there was 1,159,580 excess deaths occurred during the first two years of the pandemic (first: 620,872; second: 538,708).”

Between 2020 and 2021, the NCHS reports that “In 2021, a total of 3,464,231 U.S. resident deaths were recorded—80,502 more deaths than in 2020.” In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, it reported that “the age-adjusted death rate for the total population increased by 5.3% in 2021 from 2020 after an increase of 16.8% from 2019 to 2020”.

Perhaps even more troubling, a study by the Yale University School of Public Health found that “the excess death rate for Republican voters was 5.4 percentage points, or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democratic voters.” She went further, noting that “after COVID-19 vaccines became widely available, the excess death rate gap between Republicans and Democrats widened from 1.6 percentage points to 10.4 percentage points.”

In addition to Covid, the other four leading causes of death were heart disease, cancer, accidental injury and stroke.

***

More worrisome than natural causes of death such as heart disease, cancer, and COVID-19, are social causes of death, the most worrisome of which is gun violence. The Gun Violence Archive (GVA) reports that in 2022, 44,305 people were killed and 38,567 injured by guns. Perhaps even more troubling is that more Americans died by suicide (24,090) than by homicide, homicide, and manslaughter. Even worse, nearly a thousand children under the age of 11 (314) were killed (314) and injured (682) by guns – and nearly 5,000 people (ages 12-17) were victims of gun violence with 1,381 killed and 3,803 injured.

The GVA also reports that in 2022 647 people died from “mass shootings” and 36 from “mass killings”. “Mass shootings are mostly an American phenomenon,” she advises readers. He adds that “mass shooting” is based only on the numerical value of 4 or more shots or kills, not including the shooter.

As of April 7, 2023, as GVA reports, 11,129 people have died from gun violence, 6,402 of them died by suicide and 4,727 died from homicide, homicide, and manslaughter. Even worse, 65 children under 11 were killed and 149 injured; More than 1,300 adolescents (ages 12 to 17) were killed (385) or injured (933) as a result of armed violence.

The second worrying cause of death is maternal mortality. The World Health Organization defines it as “the death of a woman during pregnancy or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, regardless of the duration and location of the pregnancy, from any cause related to, aggravated or managed by pregnancy, but not from incidental or incidental causes.”

In the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, maternal deaths rose 40 percent at the height of the Covid pandemic. In 2021, 33 women died out of every 100,000 live births in the United States, up from 23.8 in 2020. Black mothers were hardest hit. The death rate among black women was 2.6 times that of white women in 2021, and 30% of the maternal deaths are among black women. Census Bureau data shows that blacks make up about 14% of the US population.

Then there are drug overdoses. in 2020, Forbes The Sackler family, owners of the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma, declared themselves the “wealthiest family” in America with a net worth of $10.8 billion. The company’s flagship product was Oxycontin, an opioid. In March 2022, the US Department of Justice announced a $6 settlement with Purdue Pharma stating that “the Sackler family will pay $4.325 billion over nine years to the states, municipalities, and plaintiffs who sued the company.”

Even more troubling, the settlement protects the family from further litigation, but not from any criminal charges—Sackler has never faced criminal charges—and they deny any wrongdoing. However, in June 2022, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said he would ask the state attorney general to consider criminal charges against members of the Sackler family.

America’s opioid crisis over the past quarter century has evolved through three phases, and by some estimates, there have been nearly 500,000 opioid overdose deaths over two decades. Back in the 1990s, Purdue Pharma – with FDA approval – introduced OxyContin as a legal prescription opioid. The crisis deepened when the heroin market began to replace Oxy, and now, the third wave is characterized by the introduction of illegal synthetic opioids along with fentanyl. In 2021, more than 106,000 people died from drug overdoses, including illegal drugs and prescription opioids.

Every day, about 32 people in the United States die in drink-driving accidents — that’s about 1 person every 45 minutes. In 2020, 11,654 people died in alcohol-related disability traffic fatalities — an increase of 14% from 2019. All of these deaths could have been prevented.

Sadly, Americans are dying and dying…and will continue to die.