• insomniac
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    1 year ago

    I wonder how US states compare. We’re a giant country with a lot of shithole states that drag us down.

    • red@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      *We’re a giant shithole with a few decent states that hold us up

    • Blapoo@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      A rising tide lifts all boats. Fix healthcare federally, everyone benefits. Even the shitholes.

    • luffyuk@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Alternatively, the US is a shithole country with an oppressive health care system. The current life expectancy is propped up by a few super rich states where people can actually afford to see a doctor.

    • BartsBigBugBag@lemmy.tf
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      1 year ago

      You mean there are states that aren’t shitholes? I wasn’t aware. Sure, there’s varying orders of magnitude of shittiness, from “the vast majority of the population has been permanently priced out of home ownership, and thousands of people are living in modern day Hoovervilles” at one end, to “thousands or even millions of people live in crippling poverty and having their fundamental human rights violated and restricted daily” At the other, but it’s pretty shitty everywhere for the average American.

    • VarykOP
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      1 year ago

      Looks like a max difference of five years across states, and you can guess which states are on the lower end.

  • birdcat@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Women live longer everywhere, but what’s crazy is the huge difference in the countries.

    I clicked through some and the smallest gap was less than two years (already forgot which one, clicked too fast), but in Vietnam the gap is 9.3 years. How come?

    • HumanPenguin@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      Men tend to be less risk adverse. IE do more stupid shit.

      This is more of a measurable issue in nations with more old fashioned ideas about male/female roles.

      • VarykOP
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        1 year ago

        Life expectancy favors biological females, irrespective of dietary factors.

        The theory is that when something goes wrong with the X chromosome in women, there’s a backup. With XY, males do not enjoy that safeguard.

        This continues into maturity; 1.6 times the number of men died from covid-19 compared to women.

        Same for heart disease, really, all chronic diseases.

        There are studies going in every direction(nobody likes to be told their bodies don’t operate as well as another’s), but those stats are what we’re working with.

    • VarykOP
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      1 year ago

      So I didn’t reply to you last night because I really wanted to look into this.

      Unortunately, I can’t find why, specifically, Vietnamese women live so much longer than the men. I did find two contrary articles, one that concludes Vietnamese women actually have less access to healthcare than men, and as a result, live 11 of their lifetime years sick, while Vietnamese men live eight of their lifetime years sick, leaving women with 68 healthy years and Vietnamese men with 62 healthy years.

      Those are the only Vietnamese specific statistics I found related to life expectancy between genders, but they are interesting, especially relative to that huge gap in base life expectancy.

      • birdcat@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Hey, late reply, but since it seemed to interest you, I’d like to share some thoughts I had in the meantime. It’s mostly based on limited personal observations.

        Smoking just has to play a significant role in that. You super rarely see any women smoking, and I really mean super extremely rarely, in the whole country. But men of all ages (including some teenagers) smoke everywhere, constantly. With the drinking, it’s maybe a bit similar but way less extreme, cuz there is no stigma against women drinking (again, limited personal observation! might be different in other regions or small villages)

        But then it hit me: the biggest factor could be drugs like amphetamines; stuff that overworked factory workers use to stay awake, but also shop clerks, lorry and bus drivers etc. literally an endless list. Work time is generally WAY too long, people simply cannot earn enough to survive without “little helpers”. Drug use in this context is a real problem, government doesn’t hide it.

        I suspect that men tend to use that stuff much more than women.

        And I sure suspect that the use of amphetamines does not increase one’s life span. Interesting study; small but wonderfully selected sample group imo. Check the GPT-generated summary at the end.

        Anyway, thanks for your reply, but to be super honest, I didn’t really understood it 🙈, can you maybe send me the articles? Just if you still have them, not super important.

        Acceleration of cardiovascular-biological age by amphetamine exposure is a power function of chronological age

        Background:

        • People are using amphetamines more around the world.
        • Nobody has looked into whether amphetamines can make your cardiovascular system (heart and blood vessels) and overall body age faster.

        Methods:

        • They used a device called the SphygmoCor system to measure the pulse from the wrist of the participants.
        • They had 55 people who took amphetamines, 107 who smoked tobacco, 483 who didn’t smoke, and 68 who used methadone (another type of drug). So, 713 people in total took part from 2006 to 2011.
        • They tried to find out the “biological age” of the heart (how old the heart seems, compared to the person’s actual age).

        Results:

        • The ages of the participants were between about 30 and 40.
        • They made sure to control for age differences in their analysis.
        • Both male and female participants were equally represented in the groups.
        • Almost all (94%) of the amphetamine users had taken the drug in the past week.
        • They found that the “biological age” of the heart was not just increasing linearly (like a straight line) with the actual age. Instead, it increased faster, like a curve.
        • When they compared “biological age” with other factors like time, BMI (body weight related to height), and actual age, the curve-like relationship was even stronger.
        • Even after considering all other factors that can hurt the heart (like smoking, high blood pressure, etc.), amphetamine still made the heart age faster.

        Conclusions:

        • Taking amphetamines seems to make the heart (and perhaps the body) age faster than it should.
        • This aging effect increases even faster as one gets older, suggesting the drug could be accelerating the natural aging process.
        • VarykOP
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          1 year ago

          You know what, this is a great hypothesis!

          You’re definitely right about amphetamines being bad for you, I’m sure I read articles about consequential heart failure because of amphetamines, and when I was in Vietnam vices were exactly as you say, I almost never saw a woman smoking, but all of the men smoked and drank energy drinks!

          Like multiple a day, while they were driving or exercising in the square, delivering packages, everywhere.

          I’ll go look back at my original reply and get those articles to you.

    • VarykOP
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      1 year ago

      Oh, messing with the China propagandist who just posted a statistic saying that China surpassed the US in life expectancy.

      They always post these weird china-glorifying not-world-news bits in this world news community, so I make verifiable counter-posts.

      It’s a hobby

      • luffyuk@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        They’re hardly a propagandist. They’ve made plenty of posts which paint China in a less than flattering light.

        • VarykOP
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          1 year ago

          Also, super rude and offers zero supporting evidence for their headlines when called out.

        • VarykOP
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          1 year ago

          I haven’t seen any of those. Many of their posts are about a less-than-newsworthy milestone, demonstrably false and posted with heavily biased titles to exaggerate or fabricate “achievements” of China.

    • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      OP might have had a specific reason for calling out China, but it has been true that as the US has slipped in national rankings over the years, the countries that we compare ourselves to have changed. Reagan was the nationalist booster who proclaimed that the US remains the shining city on a hill, but ironically Reagan-era policies hastened the slide while ensuring that everyone started wearing flag pins. Now we’re worse off and people are wearing AR-15 pins to show their patriotism, and people will point out that we have a lower murder rate than Rwanda (note: the US has a murder rate of 6.8 while Rwanda has a rate of 2.6 and I humbly apologize for my mistake).

      Despite spending more on law enforcement than any other country spends on their militaries (except China and of course the US), and despite having a massive economy, US crime rates are literally off the charts. Despite spending more per capita than any other country on health care, the US ranks lower than other developed countries on access. Despite having an entire political party campaigning about saving the children from everything from abortion to drag shows, the US ranks right in between Slovakia and Chile with the 33rd position among 37 OECD countries, and the state-by-state numbers vary exactly how you would expect, with the reddest states having the highest rates of infant mortality. Americans can’t compare themselves favorably to countries like Denmark, Sweden, or Finland, obviously. Germany and France are out. Much of Eastern Europe (except the Russosphere) and southern Europe are also better on most metrics.

      The good news is that the UK is looking like they’re getting set to race is to the bottom, but they have a ways to go. Thatcher gave them godzilla-scale destruction that we only matched by playing Reagan, but even Brexit might be outdone by the Trumpocalypse in the end. It’s awesome that they’re doing it on the basis of a non-binding referendum that was filled with completely false information as everyone knew even at the time, but they’re just too embarrassed to admit they fucked up and so will yank their economy for generations, but that doesn’t rival that the person who tried to overthrow the US government is neck and neck in presidential polling.

      Anyway, the US is still doing better than El Salvador in many areas. Of course, that’s partly due to US policies towards El Salvador.

      • thetreesaysbark
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        1 year ago

        Brexit is a funny one, even if people admit they were wrong they sure as hell aren’t going to accept the ‘normal’ EU rules and rejoin.

    • VarykOP
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      1 year ago

      Nice. Love you guys. Built up your vitality via scorpions and vipers

      • Aurenkin
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        1 year ago

        Nah mate, I reckon it’s mostly thanks to public healthcare and paid leave

        • regul@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Couple more Liberal governments and I reckon you could get rid of those pesky things.

        • VarykOP
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          1 year ago

          Hahaha yeah, that does check out with…let me check…every developed country with public health care.

          Hope the US catches up someday.

  • ghost_laptop@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Lol, the US is 47th, so much for the “first world”, bunch of exploited countries are doing better than them.

    • VarykOP
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      1 year ago

      It’s difficult to consider any country that uses toilet paper instead of bidets “first world”.