Diversity means diversity in health outcomes, which are vastly different between groups.
No it's not. White non Hispanic population in the U.S. has a life expectancy of 77.5, which is lower than the U.S. average life expectancy and comparable to Eastern Europe, but not Europe as a whole (life expectancy of 81.4).
There is a lot of evidence of a causal relationship between being non-white and having less access to healthcare, nutrition, and other things that affect health outcomes, and that evidence aligns well with being targets of racial discrimination.
When we just repeat baseless claims about race, we risk perpetuating it.
I've never seen evidence of a racial difference in accessing health care that is accessible. It's hard to believe skin color would affect that, while it's easy to believe (and witness) that it affects what you have access to.
The obesity rate in the US is 40%. The just-overweight rate is 33%. So unless we really ramp up on tackling obesity, the life expectancy is going be dragged down.
SubQ pen injections are something even most people afraid of needles can get used to quite quickly, so even if the pill forms never get to the same efficacy there's really no reason that they couldn't solve it for most everyone once they go generic and become affordable, or become otherwise subsidized. China already produces the APIs in huge quantities for insanely cheap for sale on the black market, so we know that they can be produced for extremely low costs.
The tragedy of short term thinking.
Does the gap in obesity rates fully explain the difference in life expectancy? Or are there other factors at play?
I don't think it actually does, because UK has lower obesity rates than Australia (26-29% versus 32%), yet also lower life expectancy (Australia is 81.1 male, 85.1 female; UK is 78.8 male, 82.8 female)
* food standards for shops and franchises .. McDonalds here has better salads that in the US,
* sport and activity as a fundemental part of most lives,
* good health care for all, even for "bottom tier" unemployed, with hybrid public/private health insurance and literal walk in, fall over, free heart surgery and follow up (for those that cannot pay).
Stats wise, higher life expectancy and better cancer survival rates*
* Yes, better, but not by much .. just cheaper and across the demographics.
Obviously lots of other factors, but it does help explain part of why we see much of the most developed portions of Asia at the top of the list.
Switzerland is an interesting counterpoint, though - average height there is taller than most of Europe - though their obesity rates are about half of that of the European average.
This is laughably untrue.[1][2][3] They're lacked basic supplies for 30 years. Frequent blackouts also complicate or prevent many types of care.
[1] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250709-bitter-pill-c...
[2] https://cuba.miami.edu/business-economy/a-close-look-at-cuba...
Cuba has been under embargo for 66 years.
Cuba also does a lot of trade with China and Spain but has relatively little to actually sell because the state controlled industries are so unproductive. Cuba also has the least productive agricultural sector in the Caribbean, despite being the most productive before the revolution.
The embargo is no excuse it doesn’t cover other countries, and Cuba has always had European trade partners. In fact they received free oil, agricultural equipment, and technical support from the USSR, and later free oil from Venezuela until a few weeks ago.
If you read what the Soviets had to say about the Cuban government it’s pretty damning.
Being permanently locked out of the most lucrative deals obviously is going to have an economic impact.
In one sense the Cuban healthcare system is mediocre, since it suffers from the shortages that plague the entire nation.
But that's like saying Cuban auto mechanics, who also suffer from shortages, are mediocre, despite their ability to keep the island's 70 year old American cars and Yugos in pristine condition.
If that was the case, you won't see death rates decrease across multiple groups and not just the weakest groups.
> Death rates declined across all racial and ethnic groups, and in both men and women.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/publichealth...
> It's the result of not only the dissipation of the COVID-19 pandemicopens in a new tab or window, but also waning death rates from all the nation's top killers, including heart disease, cancer, and drug overdoses.
The linked quotes don’t seem to support your argument, unless I misunderstand? If the weakest people die, then the remaining people are expected to be more resilient to heart disease and cancer.
I think decreases in drug overdose and suicide are probably the most isolated from this effect, so I have higher confidence that those decreases are “real”. But I can imagine ways that even they might interact.
Some people shrug it off or claim that they’re higher status because they lost weight via diet and exercise, but I map that to people who think they’re better programmers because they don’t use llms for coding, when the real result is what matters. Similar to people thinking AI slop, there are news articles about what happens if you stop GLP-1s and gain the weight back. But the stories of people who either continue to microdose, or also learn the feelings of their body and how it differs have long term success. Similar to those who know how to work with llms get good results, but the news is about how smarter people don’t use it.
All very interesting subjects. What a world we’re in.
[0] https://www.derekthompson.org/p/why-does-it-seem-like-glp-1-...
We already know women live longer than men on average, and also have less muscle-mass than men on average, so clearly it's not having too much of an impact on women.
Without looking into actual statistics here, Japan is known for having a high life expectancy, and stereotypically Japan's population is both relatively thin, and has relatively little muscle, so that also seems to defy that expectation.
What sort of mortality are you expecting here?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28991040/ Conclusions: Low muscle strength was independently associated with elevated risk of all-cause mortality, regardless of muscle mass, metabolic syndrome, ...
https://www.amjmed.com/article/s0002-9343(14)00138-7/fulltex... Muscle mass is associated inversely with mortality risk in older adults independently of fat mass and cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors
And specifically GLP-1 usage is associated with significant loss of lean mass: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38937282/ In some studies, reductions in lean mass range between 40% and 60% as a proportion of total weight lost ...
This might be a good start. There is quite a bit of material here and as might be expected much of it is fairly recent and gets a lot of this kind of skinny equals long life feedback that isn't strongly supported by clinical data.
You're only allowed to say "yea but it'd be way better if..."
Every new generation deals with growing populations to one degree or a other. World population has doubled in my lifetime for example. But human society just isn't made to have so many long lived people hoarding wealth and power decades beyond what they historically have.
GenX finally outnumbers the Boomers, but that should have happened a decade ago. The damage they've inflicted on the younger generations is really incalculable.
I think as time goes by, we may have to decide that people over a certain age are to be legally treated the same as those under 18.
> The world would be a demonstrably better place if the average life expectancy had remained around 70, like it was the year I was born.
> The damage they've inflicted on the younger generations is really incalculable.
imagine if we had to argue with 400 year old generals from colonial times.... or robber-barrons of 150+ years ago still trying to dominate everything.
I suppose rooting for people to die doesn't sound barbarous, so long as you're not rooting for anyone in particular to die.
There is no shortage of data on this. Here is one example: https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-release...
5 years life expectancy difference is a lot. As a man, it is frustrating and I want to make sure I get the most out of my life (which I enjoy)
> Researchers generally group explanations into (1) cause-of-death differences, (2) exposure/behavior differences, (3) healthcare-use differences, and (4) biological differences.
https://chatgpt.com/share/697ec925-3ab0-8000-9a09-d47d2fb33d...
Why is it useless? Any aggregate number can be broken down different ways into different groupings - region, age, education, income, wealth, smoking/not, weight, smartphone use, exercise, sleep, etc etc. By your argument, any aggregate number is useless because, no matter what the researcher chooses, it could be broken down differently.
So why choose race? I think the fact that so many in this discussion repeat the partisan trope - long used to oppose taxpayer-funded services such as healthcare, education, housing, food, etc. - of dividing people by race, is very telling.
Wow, that’s a really biting criticism of US public health — and rightly so
drsalt•2h ago
readthenotes1•2h ago
The men vs women numbers otherwise are pretty useless for the reason you gave
mmooss•1h ago
> There are many different populations in the USA.
Are you saying only your 'population' matters to you?
What do you mean by it exactly? There are lots of populations everywhere, and every population can be broken down into more populations. Any aggregate number won't describe you as an individual, even if it's a number for your own family.
Is this just a repeat of the old racial trope here?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46843222
drsalt•1h ago