Thursday, September 1, 2022

On the Health front: life expectancy drops again; polio returns to the US

"Life expectancy in the United States fell in 2021 for the second year in a row, reflecting the merciless toll exacted by covid-19 on the nation’s health, according to a federal report released Wednesday.

This is the biggest continuous decline in life expectancy at birth since the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. Americans can now expect to live as long as they did in 1996, according to provisional data released by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, life expectancy dropped from 77 years in 2020 to 76.1 years in 2021."
Continue reading the Washington Post article online (subscription maybe required) 

"Polio’s return to the US resulted from the confluence of a complicated set of scientific and societal factors that allowed a mutated version of the virus to start circulating in a susceptible community. This is the story of a life-saving vaccine with an unfortunate loophole that produced that version of the virus, and a calculated anti-vaccine campaign that created a vulnerable population."
Continue reading The Guardian article online (subscription maybe required)

A decline in life expectancy during the coronavirus pandemic marked the biggest continuous decline since the 1920s. (Brandon Dill for The Washington Post)
A decline in life expectancy during the coronavirus pandemic marked the biggest continuous decline since the 1920s. (Brandon Dill for The Washington Post)

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