The average American lifespan keeps getting shorter, even as comparably rich countries rebound and recover after Covid-19

即使相對富裕的國家在新冠疫情后反彈和復蘇,美國人的平均壽命越來越短。

Recently, National Public Radio (NPR) in the US published a story titled 'Live free and die? The sad state of US life expectancy’ that explored the great divide between the United States and peer countries on life expectancy.
While most countries experienced a dip during the Covid-19 pandemic and rebounded after vaccines and other treatments were rolled out, American life expectancy has essentially fallen off a cliff and never came back.

最近,美國國家公共廣播電臺(NPR)發表了一篇題為《自由地活著,然后死去?》美國預期壽命的悲慘狀況,探索了美國和其他國家在預期壽命上的巨大差距。
雖然大多數國家在疫情期間經歷了衰退,但在疫苗和其他治療方法推出后反彈,美國人的預期壽命實際上已經跌下了懸崖,而且再也沒有回來。

The graph published by NPR is shocking. It shows that US life expectancy is lower than in Cuba or Lebanon. The number has been known since just before Christmas when health officials announced that the country’s life expectancy had dropped starkly for a second year in a row to 76 years.
However, last week more bad news arrived after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that maternal mortality in the country reached a high in 2021. And another paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found rising mortality rates among US children and adolescents. This means you can’t blame Covid-19 exclusively for the drop in life expectancy and assume it’ll jump right back up as soon as the pandemic is finally dealt with.

美國國家公共電臺發布的圖表令人震驚。報告顯示,美國人的預期壽命低于古巴或黎巴嫩。這一數字在圣誕節前就已知曉,當時衛生官員宣布該國的預期壽命連續第二年大幅下降至76歲。
然而,上周傳來了更多的壞消息,美國疾病控制和預防中心(CDC)宣布,該國的孕產婦死亡率在2021年達到了高點?!睹绹t學會雜志》的另一篇論文發現,美國兒童和青少年的死亡率正在上升。這意味著你不能把預期壽命的下降完全歸咎于新冠病毒,并認為一旦疫情最終得到解決,預期壽命就會反彈。

The rate of maternal deaths in 2021 was 32.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, which is more than ten times higher than some other high-income countries, including Australia, Austria, Israel, Japan and Spain which all had rates between 2 and 3 deaths per 100,000 in 2020.
Regarding childrens’ increased mortality rate, Steven Woolf, the lead author of the JAMA paper and director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University put it quite succinctly. “This is the first time in my career that I've ever seen [an increase in pediatric mortality] – it's always been declining in the United States for as long as I can remember. Now, it's increasing at a magnitude that has not occurred for at least half a century.”

2021年的孕產婦死亡率為每10萬活產死亡32.9人,比其他一些高收入國家高出十倍以上,包括澳大利亞、奧地利、以色列、日本和西班牙,這些國家2020年的孕產婦死亡率均在每10萬活產死亡2至3人之間。
關于兒童死亡率的上升,《美國醫學會雜志》論文的主要作者、弗吉尼亞聯邦大學社會與健康中心名譽主任史蒂文·伍爾夫說得很簡潔?!霸谖业穆殬I生涯中,這是我第一次看到(兒童死亡率的增加)——自從我有記憶以來,美國的兒童死亡率一直在下降?,F在,它正在以至少半個世紀以來從未出現過的規模增長?!?

The paper notes that this goes far beyond stereotypes of Americans having poor eating habits or other unhealthy addictions. It found that “American children are less likely to live to age 5 than children in other high-income countries.” It continues stating that “even Americans with healthy behaviors, for example, those who are not obese or do not smoke, appear to have higher disease rates than their peers in other countries.”
The researchers cataloged what they described as the “US health disadvantage,” which essentially means that just living in the country is worse for your health and makes you die younger than in other comparable countries. Given the recent environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, where droves of carcinogenic chemicals were allowed to burn freely in the air and deposit into the soil, this may also be part of the explanation. The incident also has impacted a major metropolitan area and my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio.

這篇論文指出,這遠遠超出了人們對美國人不良飲食習慣或其他不健康嗜好的刻板印象。研究發現,“美國兒童比其他高收入國家的兒童更不可能活到5歲?!眻蟾胬^續指出,“即使是行為健康的美國人,例如那些不肥胖或不吸煙的人,他們的患病率似乎也高于其他國家的同齡人?!?br /> 研究人員將他們所謂的“美國健康劣勢”進行了分類,這基本上意味著僅僅生活在這個國家對你的健康更不利,而且會讓你比其他可比國家的人死得更早??紤]到最近發生在俄亥俄州東巴勒斯坦的環境災難,大量致癌化學物質被允許在空氣中自由燃燒并沉積到土壤中,這也可能是部分原因。這一事件還影響了一個主要的大都市地區,以及我的家鄉俄亥俄州辛辛那提市。

Additionally, right now residents of one of the largest American cities, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, are being told to drink bottled water because more than 8,000 gallons of latex-finishing solution spilled into Otter Creek in Bristol, near Philadelphia, on March 24th. Some of the chemicals in the spill include butyl acrylate, just as those released in East Palestine. It seems that such environmental disasters are becoming more frequent.
Perhaps the most baffling statistic, at least for a non-American, is that since 2020, gunfire has been the leading cause of death for children and young adults in the US, surpassing even car crashes, which had previously topped the list. Almost 20% of all deaths of Americans aged one to 18 who died in the past three years were gun-related. Compared to other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US is the only country where guns are the leading cause of death for people in this age bracket – no other nation even has it in the top four.

此外,美國最大的城市之一,賓夕法尼亞州費城的居民被告知要喝瓶裝水,因為3月24日,超過8000加侖的乳膠整理液流入費城附近布里斯托爾的水獺溪。泄漏的一些化學物質包括丙烯酸丁酯,就像在東巴勒斯坦釋放的那些一樣。這樣的環境災難似乎越來越頻繁。
也許最令人困惑的統計數據是,至少對非美國人來說,自2020年以來,槍擊一直是美國兒童和年輕人死亡的主要原因,甚至超過了此前位居榜首的車禍。在過去三年里,美國1至18歲的死亡人口中,近20%與槍支有關。與經濟合作與發展組織的其他國家相比,美國是唯一一個槍支是這一年齡段人群死亡主要原因的國家,其他國家甚至都沒有進入前四名。

Be it the stereotypical bad eating habits and endemic obesity, increasingly frequent environmental disasters, or the scourge of gun violence, there is indeed a “disadvantage” to simply existing in the US. As a consequence, as I can attest, more and more young Americans are looking to settle down in other countries – rather than wait for lawmakers to actually do something to protect the people from these dangers.
In the end, whether it’s Republicans sounding the alarm over the opioid crisis and rising drug deaths, or Democrats shouting themselves hoarse about the need for stricter gun laws to curb the disastrous gun-death stats, what most of them are interested in first and foremost is scoring points against each other. Actually helping their constituents comes as an afterthought.

無論是刻板的不良飲食習慣和地方性肥胖,越來越頻繁的環境災難,還是槍支暴力的禍害,對于僅僅在美國生存確實是一種“劣勢”。因此,正如我可以證明的那樣,越來越多的美國年輕人正尋求在其他國家定居,而不是等待立法者采取實際行動來保護人們免受這些危險。
最后,無論是共和黨人對阿片類藥物危機和不斷上升的毒品死亡人數發出警告,還是民主黨人大聲疾呼需要更嚴格的槍支法律,以遏制災難性的槍支死亡數據,他們中的大多數人首先感興趣的是互相得分。實際上,幫助他們的選民是事后的想法。

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