Comment by WaitWaitWha | Hacker News Reader

Comment by WaitWaitWha | Hacker News Reader

I read the article, but on re-read, I gave up after the first few paragraphs of lazy journalism.

> gun violence,

no reference link

> drug overdoses

Reasonable reference link although the data ends at 2020.

> auto accidents

Links to an X post of IHME chart. Why not just link to the original IHME data? Data stops at 2019.

> America’s unusually short lifespans

The referenced data is "Child and Infant Mortality", and again till 2020.

> U.S. government reported that drug-overdose deaths fell 3 percent from 2022 to 2023.

Following the link to the data, each single state where there was significant drop is * as "*Underreported due to incomplete data." For example, North Carolina drug OD "dropped" 49.34% yoy. Not only that the data source has it on the top in large, framed box "Some states currently have longer than usual delays in reporting drug overdose deaths."

I really want this to be true, but after this, I am not convinced.

Do you really need a reference on gun violence?

I think he's questioning whether those factors changed, not whether those factors contribute to deaths. The claim of the article after all, is that life expectancy has risen.

In order to judge the merits of the argument it is helpful to understand why certain points are made so journalists will usually provide some citation which justifies their claims. It doesn’t help the argument to provide bad references, let alone to not bother with a reference.

Yes. The overwhelming majority of gun violence are suicides, so real data is a great proxy for things that are harder to track.

If you want to see if America is getting healthier, look at any large insurance firm's actuaries on current rates of mortality. They are predicting fairly unusual patterns suggesting American's are becoming unnaturally sick and dying at a higher rate than before 2020. These kind of articles are just trying to undermine the new adminstration's attempts to correct for this.

If you want to see if America is getting healthier, look at any large insurance firm's actuaries on current rates of mortality. They are predicting fairly unusual patterns suggesting American's are becoming unnaturally sick and dying at a higher rate than before 2020. These kind of articles are just trying to undermine the new administrations attempts to correct for this.

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