I Better Not Cry, I Better Not Pout
I better not challenge an oppressive hierarchy
Links are at the end.
You better not feel, kid.
Never liked that tune.
U.S. life expectancy continued to fall in 2021 as covid, drug deaths surged
Even as some peer nations began to bounce back from the toll of the pandemic, life expectancy in the U.S. dropped to 76.4 years at birth, down from 77 in 2020, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics. That means Americans can expect to live as long as they did in 1996 — a dismal benchmark for a reliable measure of health that should rise steadily in an affluent, developed nation. (In August, using preliminary data, the agency had pegged life expectancy in 2021 at 76.1 years.)
Notably, every age group in the U.S. — from young children to seniors 85 and older — saw a rise in its death rate. Men, women and most racial groups lost ground. In some previous years, even when overall life expectancy declined, some groups advanced.1
The U.S. ranks about 30th in life expectancy2 among the 38 OECD member countries.3 In part this is because we have awful infant mortality rates (32nd)4 and maternal mortality rates (20th among 22 countries with 2021 data).5 In part this is because we don’t take care of lower income people as well as other countries do: we don’t have universal health care, and we don’t have a robust social welfare system, which, in a NIH study of social policy impact on life expectancy, includes education.6
(We do have racism and misogyny problems in medicine, which contribute to our horrid health care outcomes. I wrote about that a few months ago.7)
Emerging research from within the U.S. provides evidence that social expenditures may bring benefits to health. In a recent study, a higher ratio of state social welfare spending relative to healthcare spending was associated with significant improvements in a variety of health outcomes. Cross-national evidence suggests that several social programs may have positive associations with health including parental leave, child allowances and subsidized child care, unemployment benefits, and education.
As one climbs down the socio-economic ladder, paid sick days become scarce. The U.S. ranks low on absences from work due to illness, meaning that US workers take fewer days off than most other countries reporting on the indicator. If everybody here had a reasonable number of paid sick days available — and if we weren’t so intent on toughing it out — we would be up there with the saner countries.
Policy. Policy policy policy policy. People didn’t just randomly get themselves addicted to opiates, randomly go to work sick with Covid because they didn’t have paid sick days, randomly watch their babies die at birth . . . it’s all policy. We are uncivilized.
The 10 Best Albums of 2022
According to Hollywood Reporter;8
Fred Kaplan at Slate with the top 10 Jazz albums;9
Pitchfork’s top-rated cross-genre album rankings;10
NPR’s top 10, with links to representative videos;11
Esquire, with 25 of their top 10 albums including video links;12
Rolling Stone doesn’t stop at 10 either;13
Vulture’s top 10;14
Slate again with the top 10 and some from a Beach Boys’ ghost;15
Taste of Country with their top 10 country albums;16 and
popmatters with their top 10 global albums.17
Somewhat surprisingly, a number of the bands and albums on the various compilations have appeared in our writing music lists.
The trains that will and won’t be running on New Year’s Eve
This is in three of Japan’s four largest cities, so you don’t have a lot of time to get there.18
Merry Christmas to the war industries
About a trillion dollars for the merchants of death when you throw in the spooks.19 Could be worse? Maybe? Anyway, these stocks are always a bargain.
Your Daily Horoscope for December 22, 2022
Vice has it. Venus is connecting with Uranus, and all that that entails.20
Spookie Daly Pride, “Medicine Chest,” seems to be a one-off. Fever High, “FHNY;” Ingrid Lucia & The Flying Neutrinos, “The Hotel Child,” playing us off the stage and into the 1940s.
And that, comrades, is all I got—except for the fundraising ask. If you like what I do please share it far and wide, and please consider subscribing if you have the dollars and the inclination. $5/month, $50/year unless you feel like going bigger.
Take care, be well.
Also: try Gordon Lightfoot Gold.
Unfortunately, a lot of that death rate results from political objections to medical science and refusal to get vaccinated or boosted or, in some cases, to even get tested. The Catholic theologians, in a different context, used to call it "invincible ignorance".