These types of articles tend to be conservative in their outlook. Things are getting better, so no need to change anything, right?
But let’s look at just to drug overdose deaths mentioned in the article. Here’s a graph from the CDC:
You’ll note that, yes, there is a downward trend from 2022-2023. The part that ignores is there’s a much larger rising trend. I’d compare it to claiming global warming is getting better because winter is colder.
I’m not saying the numbers going down is a bad thing, I just don’t think two data points going in the direction you want to claim outweighs the rest of the data.
Yeah. There’s also this:
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/us-life-expectancy-increase-rcna184502
It sounds great, until you learn that life expectancy was 78.8 years before Covid and is now 78.4 years. Covid isn’t killing a whole bunch of people anymore, so there isn’t some big improvement that is being masked by Covid deaths, so basically we’re just returning to where we were, slightly worse than. And where we were is bad.
Garbage article with cherry-picked statistics to try and spin good will towards the health industry.
We’re healthier because we’re getting murdered less? I’d like to see the numbers on deaths due to denied claims on treatable ailments.
Americans are healthier because of less car crashes? What? I’d like to see the numbers on deaths from women who needed, but could not get, access to birth care.
Maybe we’re crashing less because we can’t afford to drive as much. Perhaps the drop in obesity is due to starvation wages? Drug deaths are down, but I’d bet it’s due to wage theft.
No one knows why? Same with everything else in capitalism, just follow the money, or in this case, the lack thereof.
Sounds like you already have “how things are” picked out in your mind, and everything that doesn’t match that, has to get twisted around to match it again. Nothing from the outside can come in unless it already matches what’s in there.
I have no idea about the health statistics, I’m just some guy that posted an article. But I think you want to be careful with that thought pattern.
Nah my dude. That’s just the minimal amount of skepticism one needs when dealing with any sort of statistical results, something the author is clearly lacking (intentional or otherwise).
The authors central claim is “Americans are now healthier” and then throws a school or red herrings unrelated to health like murder rate, vehicular deaths, etc. Safety =/= health even though they are both components of “life expectancy”, obfuscating the difference is misleading at best, malicious and manipulative at worst and needs to be called out as such.
I was discussing the article, not you. I don’t see how comments about me are warrented. If you disagree with my point of view, I’ll discuss your ideas on that with you. Anything else doesn’t seem pertinent, regardless of whichever thought patterns you think I need to be careful with.
My point is, you read the article and decided a bunch of things that make no sense. Obesity in America is more often associated with poverty (stemming from bad nutrition and inconsistent eating) than the opposite. Also, the number of people on starvation wages has been going down the last few years, although it’s still criminally high. If starvation wages lead to lower obesity, we’d have been seeing obesity going up. Drug deaths due to wage theft? What?
That’s why I jumped to pointing out that I think you’re reaching these conclusions for counterfactual reasons. I’m not trying to ad hominem, maybe you have a point about that part. But I’ve seen a lot of people on Lemmy who follow the logic of forming a sort of sterotype-view of the world (“the US is suffering and every single year it gets worse”) and then get upset and attack any piece of data that tries to come in that conflicts with that picture, and it looks to me like your whole message is an exercise in that.
Edit: Clarified language
People cannot eat, poorly or otherwise, if they aren’t paid enough to buy food. People cannot afford to eat, so obesity rates are dropping. Minimum wage is making gains in some areas, that’s true, but groceries are also rising.
Same goes for drug deaths. People cannot afford drugs, due to excess profits for exectutives at the expense of employee wages.
I’d love for America to not get worse every year, but it’s impossible to turn a blind eye. Articles like this are pro-corporate propaganda, as most of the big name news sources are.
Very recently, there has been a lot of attention on healthcare, and this article is trying to spin a positive narrative of American health, despite the fact that Americans are sicker for longer, and have lower life expectancies, and higher healthcare costs, than peer countries.
It’s less coming in conflict with the nihilistic view of America, and more an attempt at deception, to paint a better picture of America than actualky exists. Articles like this need to be questioned.
People cannot eat, poorly or otherwise, if they aren’t paid enough to buy food. People cannot afford to eat, so obesity rates are dropping.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3198075/
“Poverty rates and obesity were reviewed across 3,139 counties in the U.S. (2,6). In contrast to international trends, people in America who live in the most poverty-dense counties are those most prone to obesity (Fig. 1A). Counties with poverty rates of >35% have obesity rates 145% greater than wealthy counties.”
Minimum wage is making gains in some areas, that’s true, but groceries are also rising.
“Most importantly, inflation-adjusted wage growth has been strongest for the lowest-income workers, whose real wages are 16 percent higher than they were before the pandemic. Policymakers still must do more to address income inequality and to help struggling households: In 2023 alone, 47 million people were living in food-insecure households, and around 40 million people were living in poverty. But it is unequivocally the case that wages and employment are higher than ever before in U.S. history.”
Same goes for drug deaths. People cannot afford drugs, due to excess profits for exectutives at the expense of employee wages.
Drugs are highly correlated with desperation and misery. The number of people in overdose territory who just don’t buy drugs because they don’t have enough money… it just doesn’t work that way. Famously so.
I’d love for America to not get worse every year, but it’s impossible to turn a blind eye.
I’m sure you would, genuinely. And it’s still very, very far from being a good place. What I am saying is that you have developed an impenetrable mental structure where any indication that some particular aspect getting better is something you’re going to attack.
It is okay to evaluate a source based on whether it seems solid, rather than whether it agrees with your existing picture. If you are evaluating it only based on whether it matches the current picture, you can get yourself stuck.
An article from 2011 is hardly an indication of recent American health. There was a whole pandemic since then.
The article about wages and inflation does not take price gouging into account, or people having to work multiple jobs.
Perhaps the less drug deaths could be due to less opiods being prescribed, due to America losing it’s poppy farms in Afghanistan.
Beside those points, the diagnosis isn’t necessary, not without seeing your psychology degree.
The article about wages and inflation does not take price gouging into account
I knew this was going to come up, I don’t know why I didn’t address it. Yes it does take price gouging into account. ‘Inflation-adjusted wage growth’ includes price gouging in the ‘inflation-adjusted’ part. Food prices have gone up by about 25%, and wages at the lowest end of the scale have gone up by about 35%. That’s probably invisible to you, because if you’re on Lemmy, you’re probably not at the lowest end of the scale, whereas the food prices going up is definitely visible to you.
Perhaps the less drug deaths could be due to less opiods being prescribed, due to America losing it’s poppy farms in Afghanistan.
Can I do this, too? Perhaps the less drug deaths could be due to the increased wages and social safety net, giving breathing room to people who were previously desperate, and sending fewer people into a strangling cycle of addiction and pain with only one predictable way out. I don’t even have to cite a study! I can just say “perhaps.”
Beside those points, the diagnosis isn’t necessary, not without seeing your psychology degree.
Up to you. I’m trying to help you, but it seems you don’t want it. These things happen, good luck with your understandings.
