Excess death everywhere….

[rkbabang]

I ran across this today and thought of this topic on excess deaths.  At least in the UK ambulance response times are horrible and appear to be trending in the wrong direction.  About an hour on average some months of this year for "category 2" calls which includes chest pains and strokes, with 90th percentile up over 2 hours some months.  

 

https://www.health.org.uk/publications/long-reads/why-have-ambulance-waiting-times-been-getting-worse

 

Edited December 21, 2022 by rkbabang

[Spekulatius]

Interesting thread about demographic trends:

1) migration to south (Mainly Florida and Texas)

 

Florida needs migration, they have more death than birth

 

The US has worsening demographics , less birth and more death since COVID-19. Roughly 600k more death annually since 2020.

 

 

Edited December 31, 2022 by Spekulatius

[Gregmal]

Nothing Dillards wouldn’t tell you. NY/CA people largely live in bubbles thinking they’re superior to everyone and that they are the center of the world with everything/everyone else underneath them and envying what they have. In reality their world is rapidly changing. They just haven’t come to terms with it yet. It’s so much easier to fall back on “we’re the best” and “Florida’s always been boom/bust”. 

[3259]

Agree with cause mostly being Covid issues and deferred healthcare. The drug overdose death #s in many parts of the US have been pretty scary as well.

 

Here are the figures for Davidson Co (Nashville), TN.

[Red Lion]

14 hours ago, Gregmal said:

Nothing Dillards wouldn’t tell you. NY/CA people largely live in bubbles thinking they’re superior to everyone and that they are the center of the world with everything/everyone else underneath them and envying what they have. In reality their world is rapidly changing. They just haven’t come to terms with it yet. It’s so much easier to fall back on “we’re the best” and “Florida’s always been boom/bust”. 

 

+1. I live in CA, often daydream about leaving, and it always amuses me the shock and horror I see on people's faces when I mention the thought of leaving to another state. These lifelong Californians think the rest of the country is like Venezuela or something, when we are the ones with rampant homelessness, drug use, crime, and an insane cost of living. The winters are pretty nice, I'll give you that. 

[Gregmal]

43 minutes ago, RedLion said:

 

+1. I live in CA, often daydream about leaving, and it always amuses me the shock and horror I see on people's faces when I mention the thought of leaving to another state. These lifelong Californians think the rest of the country is like Venezuela or something, when we are the ones with rampant homelessness, drug use, crime, and an insane cost of living. The winters are pretty nice, I'll give you that. 

LOL NYers are even more deranged. The forced blank stare and attempted condescension when asking “why would anyone want to live in Florida”…when 1) deep down you know they know why and for some reason it bothers them, and 2) it’s like yo, go ask your mom! …. literally; in the northeast, for anyone of any means, it’s just a given that at a certain age you go south with the only question being whether or not you keep the summer home.

[copelandlewis]

I live in Columbus. There's rampant homelessness, a drug overdose death epidemic and crime and the weather and traffic suck.  But people keep moving here.  Go Bucks!

[TwoCitiesCapital]

On 12/31/2022 at 11:54 AM, Gregmal said:

LOL NYers are even more deranged. The forced blank stare and attempted condescension when asking “why would anyone want to live in Florida”…when 1) deep down you know they know why and for some reason it bothers them, and 2) it’s like yo, go ask your mom! …. literally; in the northeast, for anyone of any means, it’s just a given that at a certain age you go south with the only question being whether or not you keep the summer home.

 

Moved from NYC back to the Midwest myself. Still can't understand why anyone would live in Florida

[Spekulatius]

Mortality for your teens up significantly since 2018:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/death-rate-children-teens-guns-drugs-54c604f4?mod=hp_lead_pos1

 

Didn’t know that the trends started before COVID-19. Leading causes: firearms, drugs, driving. Sad.

[mcliu]

14 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Mortality for your teens up significantly since 2018:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/death-rate-children-teens-guns-drugs-54c604f4?mod=hp_lead_pos1

 

Didn’t know that the trends started before COVID-19. Leading causes: firearms, drugs, driving. Sad.

This is what the US should be focused on. Drugs, immigration, education, infrastructure.

Instead the media and policy makers try to distract with cultural issues, "social justice" and foreign wars.

[cubsfan]

2 minutes ago, mcliu said:

This is what the US should be focused on. Drugs, immigration, education, infrastructure.

Instead the media and policy makers try to distract with cultural issues, "social justice" and foreign wars.

Well said. No doubt.

[TwoCitiesCapital]

Thoughts and prayers doesn't seem to be working

 

Guess we'll send more

[Spekulatius]

It's not just an US problem too, the same thing happens with variations in Europe as well. It is also noticeable that these trends toward increasing teen mortality got started before COVID-19 (around 2018 based on the charts) and then COVID exacerbated them.

 

I am not sure what is really happening here, much less have solutions, but looking at this issues should be front and center for politicians and social scientists. The higher mortality for younger people is a large reason why the average life expectancy in the US has declined by almost 2 years.

 

I think it's hard to come up with solutions, if you don't work on the right problems.

[Saluki]

I'd be curious to know if the teen deaths in Europe are similar to the US, since there is a huge difference in gun ownership in places like UK vs the US.  I also think that the incidents of violence are worse than the numbers portray.  There is a very controversial former Army Lt Colonel, Dave Grossman, who researched and wrote several books on things like school shootings.  People get upset when they find out the police department spent money to hire a guy who wrote a book called "On Killing" to work with their officers. I haven't read the book but his YouTube videos make a lot of counter-intuitive points. He's got some shocking statistics to back up his theories.  If we had vietnam era medical treatment for gunshot wounds, the murder rate from guns would be 4x higher than it is today.  So just as we adjust housing prices for inflation, we should take trauma medicine into account when saying things like NYC violent crime is less than it was in the 1970s. It's higher.  In the 70s, a place like Peoria Illinois probably never had a gunshot victim in the emergency room. Now they probably have see shooting victims weekly, but have better skill at treating them and having them live than NY doctors in the 70s.

 

Curiously, he puts much of the blame on violent TV and video games.  During WWI and WWII less than 1/4 of troops on the firing line would fire their weapons.  The army switched the bootcamp training from firing at round bullseye's to human silhouettes and got it to 55% by the Korean War.  They got it up to 95% in Vietnam with silhouettes that pop-up, you shoot them, and they go down: Skinner's operant conditioning. They also drilled into you things to desensitize you to violence, like the scene in Full Metal Jacket where they sleep with their rifles, or the chants during marches "what makes the grass grow? blood blood blood. What do marines do? Kill kill kill."  The first person shooter games, specifically are desensitizing them to killing and the violent TV makes them less affected by human suffering, which is what the military did to get the kill rates up in War, but it's being done to teenagers who have little impulse control and access to guns.  Scary stuff. 

 

[Saluki]

 

[crs223]

according to the graphic, teen deaths from all sources went up.  even teen deaths from COVID, car accidents, guns, suicide and poison.

 

I don’t see how the common root cause is TV or guns.

 

 

Edited May 18, 2023 by crs223

[Spekulatius]

@crs223 I don't think there is a single root cause, there are probably multiple causes because the rising mortality is due to such diverse reasons than gun violence & accidents  as well as suicides, drugs and even traffic accidents. How likely is it that these diverse causes are all related to the same root cause? I think it's unlikely, just me thinking like an engineer or scientist.

 

I have never done social studies or conducted experiments, so what do I know.

 

if you really want to learn about similar matters, I recommend the "Big Brains" podcast from UChicago. I haven't seen an episode about this topic, but they do have some interesting approaches there , where researches test out their hypothesis and find out what seems to be working and what not.

[backtothebeach]

10 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

gun violence & accidents  as well as suicides, drugs and even traffic accidents.

 

Cell phone and social media addiction.

[Ulti]

Slightly off topic

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/18/sam-zell-billionaire-real-estate-investor-dies-.html

bummer I just listened to a recent interview 

 

[Castanza]

16 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Mortality for your teens up significantly since 2018:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/death-rate-children-teens-guns-drugs-54c604f4?mod=hp_lead_pos1

 

Didn’t know that the trends started before COVID-19. Leading causes: firearms, drugs, driving. Sad.

And the underlying causes that drive people to partake in these risky/demented behaviors? Depression, anxiety, insomnia, mental disorders, prescription drug use, social media, cyber bullying resulting in self-esteem issues, etc. Todays kids always have the pressure on them. Whether performance in school or sports there is no break. Whether it's bullying, or relationships there is no break as social media exists. 

 

It used to be you would go home from school and you could "get away" to some degree. Life had silos and you could containerize things. Kid's these days are exposed to so much stuff 24/7. There is no break and they have to adapt on the fly constantly. It's very easy to feel overwhelmed and feel left behind or left out etc. It's no wonder teens are beginning to crack. Figure out how to address that and I think the situation gets better.

 

A good friend of mine is a teenage counselor here where I live. She said the majority of kids she talks with who have issues that partially can be traced back to social media. Especially in teenage girls. She said there is an alarming number of young girls who feel pressured into trying to create OF accounts and overly sexual social media material due to the constant sexualization of content out there. I can't even use SNAP or Instagram anymore because 99% of the content on there is just clickbait sexualized content of girls who look like they are barely 18. I mean the top influencers right now are people like Livvy Dunn and other college athletes who basically sexualize themselves for money. This is what we are promoting now as successful?

 

Don't get me wrong, I like hot women just as much as the next guy. But damn this stuff is getting out of hand with being pushed on the younger kids. I have nephews that are 11 and 13 who use SNAP and Instagram. I know damn well they see this stuff. When I was their age girls were getting yelled at for wearing tank tops and skirts being too short. We'd find a friends older brothers Playboy or some kid would Google "Boobs" in the school library and you'd see a 240p image of Pamela Anderson lmao. Completely different world for kids today. Girls instead of getting yelled at for wearing spaghetti strap tank tops or rolling their skirts up like when I went to school are encouraged to wear booty shorts and sports bras to the gym. Guys have basically unlimited access to content and whatever else they want in their pocket. 

 

Christ I sound old fashion and I'm only 30.....stuff changes fast. 

[Spooky]

17 minutes ago, Ulti said:

Slightly off topic

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/18/sam-zell-billionaire-real-estate-investor-dies-.html

bummer I just listened to a recent interview 

 

 

Very sad news. I just listened to one of his recent podcast appearances as well. Interesting guy.

[Ulti]