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This seems like a case of temporary circumstances and statistical creating a doomsday picture. The temporary circumstances seem to be the suicide rate brought
by vivekd 8y ago
This seems like a case of temporary circumstances and statistical creating a doomsday picture. The temporary circumstances seem to be the suicide rate brought on by the still recovering economy and glib life prospects. Partly related to this is a new deadly drug that is gaining popularity.
Add to this the statistical factors like the anti smoking and healthy living campaigns hitting their peak effect a few decades after improvents in modern science hit their peak effectiveness.
To me, it seems like life exectancy will improve again as the economy improves and governments find ways to fight fentynal.
Improving life expectancy maked great advancements in healthcare and sanitaion and lifestyle in the past. As these improvements seem to have peaked I dont know that life expectany is still a good indicator of progress in rich nations
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago> To me, it seems like life exectancy will improve again as the economy improves and governments find ways to fight fentynal. I find this exceedingly difficult to believe in the rural areas of the US. The current expansion is almost the longest on record, going on since 2009. The structural forces that have hollowed out the economies of rural areas (widening inequality, e-commerce, globalization, etc.) are only increasing, not decreasing. The drug overdoses may be caused by powerful opiates like fentanyl, but the drug use is mainly a symptom, not cause, of despair.
- adventured 8y agoThe biggest problem in the overdose spike is that fentanyl is killing very large numbers of people that otherwise might not have died of overdoses from heroin a decade or more ago. The US is being blasted from outside by huge quantities of fentanyl, primarily by China. It's bordering on an act of war (Opium War style). The notion that China can't stop the fentanyl pouring out of their country toward the US is ridiculous. It's going to end up killing hundreds of thousands of Americans over ten years. Imagine if the roles were reversed and US was pumping that kind of drug into China in such quantities, killing a million Chinese every decade, and pretending it couldn't stop it.
- Alex_Fragd 8y agoI suspect that if a different country started producing fentanyl on the scale that China does, but offered it at a 10% reduced price, we would purchase the drug from that country instead. then the blame would shift from China to the new country. maybe instead of blaming others, we should fix ourselves. stop buying cheap dangerous drugs and decriminalize the drugs we do have
- Leary 8y agoIf China can stop fentanyl from pouring out of their country, why can't the US stop it from pouring in?
- jtuente 8y agoI haven't read anything yet on the source of the fentanyl, do you have a worthwhile link?
- jeffal 8y agohttps://globalnews.ca/news/4658157/fentanyl-vancouver-real-estate-billion-money-laundering-police-study/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4658157/fentanyl-vancouver-real-e...
- joncrane 8y agoIt's relatively well known that if there's a chemical you want, there are several factories in China that will make it and ship it to you. Anabolic Steroids are one example, Fentanyl is another, I'm sure there are many more. For example I wouldn't be surprised if there's a black market for agricultural chemicals that are banned in the US but you can get them from China.
- dang 8y agoPlease don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar.
- adventured 8y ago> This seems like a case of temporary circumstances and statistical creating a doomsday picture. It's definitely intellectual fraud. This is a life expectancy projection for babies born in 2017 and it's assuming the opioid overdoses (the recent scale of which didn't exist ten years ago) continue unabated for seven or eight more decades.