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Yea, statistics can make a case for anything. Life expectancy went down, but the average age of a covid death was 82 years old, meaning half were older than 82

Yea, statistics can make a case for anything. Life expectancy went down, but the average age of a covid death was 82 years old, meaning half were older than 82. These octogenarians and older are pulling the average life expectancy up every year they continue living. It would be a way different story to have the average life expectancy go down because a bunch of, say, 20 year olds died.

bena 5y ago
Yes, old people living longer pulls up the average life expectancy. That's how it works. And that's been happening every year by a little bit every year (about 0.15 years). Until this year. When it decreased by 0.1/year for three years in a row, it was a big deal. Having it drop by 1.2 in just a single year is effectively astronomical. It is a significant event.
- sjwalter 5y ago
  It depends on how it drops by 1.2 If all you care about is the numbers, then a drop of 1.2 is a horrible terrible outcome and we should all recoil in horror, no matter how it happens. To me and almost every other human, having a bunch of 80 year olds die, losing out on say, 1-5 quality-adjusted years of life, is not great, but it is nowhere near a tragedy. Having a bunch of young healthy people with say 50-70 quality-adjusted years of life left, is an absolute horrific nightmarish cosmic-scale terrible outcome. But to you, it's 1.2 either way.
  - hawkice 5y ago
    > nowhere near a tragedy It might be useful to tone down any highly idiomatic usage of English here, because this sounds very weird. edit: sort of has this vibe. me: "I was sad when my grandmother died" hn: "WAAAAYYY off there, buddy."
  - bena 5y ago
    If half are over 82, what does that make the other half? I'll wait for you to figure that one out. 1.2 is major, no way to slice it. Because either we've been lucky for decades with all of the slight increases or something major just happened. Now you're trying to color the discussion by projecting things onto me. I never used the words "horrific" or "nightmarish" or even "terrible". I used the words significant and astronomical. Because they apply. When we've been slowly gaining by 0.1 years/year, a drop of 1.2 years is a -1.3 change. That's a 1300% decrease compared to previous years. Those sorts of scales of difference are typically found in astronomy. Why do you have a vested interest in downplaying what happened over the past year?

bena 5y ago

Yes, old people living longer pulls up the average life expectancy. That's how it works. And that's been happening every year by a little bit every year (about 0.15 years). Until this year. When it decreased by 0.1/year for three years in a row, it was a big deal. Having it drop by 1.2 in just a single year is effectively astronomical. It is a significant event.

sjwalter 5y ago
It depends on how it drops by 1.2 If all you care about is the numbers, then a drop of 1.2 is a horrible terrible outcome and we should all recoil in horror, no matter how it happens. To me and almost every other human, having a bunch of 80 year olds die, losing out on say, 1-5 quality-adjusted years of life, is not great, but it is nowhere near a tragedy. Having a bunch of young healthy people with say 50-70 quality-adjusted years of life left, is an absolute horrific nightmarish cosmic-scale terrible outcome. But to you, it's 1.2 either way.
- hawkice 5y ago
  > nowhere near a tragedy It might be useful to tone down any highly idiomatic usage of English here, because this sounds very weird. edit: sort of has this vibe. me: "I was sad when my grandmother died" hn: "WAAAAYYY off there, buddy."
- bena 5y ago
  If half are over 82, what does that make the other half? I'll wait for you to figure that one out. 1.2 is major, no way to slice it. Because either we've been lucky for decades with all of the slight increases or something major just happened. Now you're trying to color the discussion by projecting things onto me. I never used the words "horrific" or "nightmarish" or even "terrible". I used the words significant and astronomical. Because they apply. When we've been slowly gaining by 0.1 years/year, a drop of 1.2 years is a -1.3 change. That's a 1300% decrease compared to previous years. Those sorts of scales of difference are typically found in astronomy. Why do you have a vested interest in downplaying what happened over the past year?