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Kind of mindblowing that you can speak to someone who was already in their 20s during WWII.
by jstx1 4y ago
Kind of mindblowing that you can speak to someone who was already in their 20s during WWII.
- melling 4y agoKissinger will be 100 this year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger President Carter turns 99 too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter At some point over the next 50 years, science gets a few wins and a lot more people will reach 100.
- Gare 4y agoIt's also a game of numbers. Back then, the world population was only 2 billion people. And a lot of their generation have died during WW2.
- melling 4y agoMore Americans died during the Civil War. Life expectancy has increased, and will continue to increase, because of science. Antibiotics only started appearing in the 1940s, for example. Jimmy Carter survived cancer in his 90’s. That likely would not have happened a few decades ago.
- devoutsalsa 4y agoWhat surprised me was learning only 6,800 colonials died in battle during the American Revolutionary War, but 130,000 died from smallpox. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War
- bumby 4y agoThere seems to be a relatively large amount of uncertainty in those estimates. One source claims 17k “disease dead” while another claims 130k just from smallpox. The war dead estimates have a wide range too.
- cafard 4y agoWW I is said to have been the first in which more soldiers died of wounds than of disease.
- drewcoo 4y agoUS life expectancy is dropping. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220831.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/... And if life expectancy for a few elites is increasing, that means it's decreasing even more for the rest of us, given the trends.
- yuliyp 4y agoIt dropped over the past 2 years due to COVID. In general it's on an upward trend.
- random314 4y agoIt has been on a downward trend before covid19. For example, American life expectancy is lower than Cuban life expectancy.
- yuliyp 4y agoWhat? It's been steady at around 78.5 - 78.9 between 2010 and 2019 [1]. I'm not sure what the point of mentioning Cuba was or its relevance to trends in the US life expectancy is; its life expectancy has been within a year of the US for the past 40 years[2]. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2020-2021/LExpMort.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2020-2021/LExpMort.pdf [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=CU-US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?location...
- random314 4y agoYour own chart confirms my statement, inspite of the misapplied use of the adjective "steady", which you switched to from the "upward trend" you stated in your first comment. THERE IS NO UPWARD TREND. What was steady before 2014 is the INCREASE in life expectancy every year. The first derivative was steady. Now the first derivative has been negative and expectancy is only STEADY if you squint your eyes to lower the resolution of the data to 0.5 instead of 0.1 This is a clearer chart with delta measurements https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life-expectancy https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life... You can see the decline phase in red in the lower split. It's a marked shift from the continuous green line. To see it more clearly set the end date to 2018. You can clearly see from your own data that life expectancy peaked in the United States in 2014 and hasn't recovered yet. If the previous green trend had continued we would be at a life expectancy of 80.0 - not still short if the 2014 peak. The purpose of the example of Cuba is CONTRAST. How a lower income country with a higher baseline life expectancy continues to have a green trend i.e. life expectancy at year n+1 is more than year n - ALWAYS. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CUB/cuba/life-expectancy https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CUB/cuba/life-expectan... It has not been "steady". It has reversed trends from a consistent increase in expectancy - green trend - every year since records have been kept. All changes in life expectancy are in the decimal range. Disguising the decline by specifying a range doesn't help.
- paulpauper 4y agoShows how important genes are. I think having a huge legacy sorta imbues a will to live.
- jgilias 4y agoIt seems that the science has already gained a few wins in the last twenty years when it comes to understanding (and slowing down) aging. It will take time for that to trickle down to the medical system. I mean, there are good reasons why we have the processes in place before we start recommending stuff to the general population. That being said, the first people who are going to live to 150 (most of that in good health) are likely already among us.
- nradov 4y agoLife expectancy is stagnant or declining. The oldest person died in 1997 at age 122. No one has surpassed that record since. There is zero scientific basis to expect that anyone alive today will live to 150. It's not impossible, but it would depend on multiple breakthrough scientific advances akin to miracles.
- pantalaimon 4y agoThe sample size there is also really small, the average age of the top 10 oldest people ever is 118 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people
- senthil_rajasek 4y agoPardon me, I haven't been actively following the science of aging. Would you share some credible sources ( books, links ) that explain the new discoveries in slowing down human aging?
- jgilias 4y agoThis one: https://books.google.com/books/about/Lifespan.html?id=0fEbwQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y https://books.google.com/books/about/Lifespan.html?id=0fEbwQ... The book itself is somewhat pop-sci’ish, and there is something to be said about Sinclair himself being somewhat sensationalistic. However, pretty much all concrete statements are backed with footnotes to actual research papers if you’re willing to dig deeper.
- akgerber 4y agoIt was very good to be able visit my 98-year-old grandmother at Christmastime (and I did a lot to be able to do so safely last year) — at this age, there can't be many left.
- tinco 4y agoIt's sort of mindblowing that there's adults now that have never talked to someone who was in their 20s during WW2. It makes it something akin to ancient history. Even though I'm "only" 35, WW2 never felt like something that happened a very long time ago, it was something that happened to my grandparents and that influenced the circumstances and upbringing of my parents.
- missedthecue 4y agoMet someone the other day who showed me pictures of their grandparents who were kids in the 1980s.
- sebmellen 4y agoMy grandfather was born in 1902, and I'm in my early twenties now. It's wild — I know people my age whose grandparents were born in the early 70s.
- refurb 4y agoSomewhat similar to 9/11. For people not yet in their 20’s it must seem like ancient history (like the Vietnam war was for me despite happening not that long before I was born).
- mjklin 4y ago“I literally couldn't talk to any one. There was nobody. I just walked off by myself... I could never talk to anyone about it and never understood anyone's reaction." - Noam Chomsky the day of the Hiroshima bombing
- sitkack 4y agoHe was 17 when the Hiroshima was nuked.