Nearly 19% more Americans died in 2020 than in 2019, according to the @CDCgov.

This is the biggest such increase since 1918, when deaths rose 30%.

Deadly pandemics will do that trib.al/HwnE7fo
There are three different U.S. mortality stories:

— Americans 65+: Mortality rates have been in steady decline for almost a century
— Ages 45 through 64: Declines have been less steady
— Infants and children: Declines since 1900 have been spectacular trib.al/KbZRbU1
Infants have gone from being the age group with the second-highest mortality rate to middle of the pack.

Small children have gone from middle of the pack to second-lowest.

Kids ages 5 through 14 have always had the lowest mortality rate trib.al/KbZRbU1
The observation that downward mortality trends have reversed in recent years for some groups of Americans is not new.

Research has identified those without college degrees and rural Americans as especially troubled trib.al/KbZRbU1
Advances in overall life expectancy stalled in the U.S. after 2010 while continuing in other wealthy countries because:

➡️ Rising mortality due to external causes
➡️ Slowing in declines in deaths from internal causes, chiefly cardiovascular diseases trib.al/KbZRbU1
For young adults, the medical and public-health advances that have helped bring overall mortality down over time can be overwhelmed by a:

➡️ Crime wave
➡️ Drug-overdose epidemic
➡️ Pandemic that turns the world upside-down trib.al/KbZRbU1
The takeoff of U.S. young adult mortality relative to other countries over the past two decades is mainly about drug overdoses trib.al/KbZRbU1
The U.S. young adult death rate was on the high end due to persistently higher death rates from traffic accidents and homicides.

This is probably because:

🚘 We drive more
🚓 Have laxer speeding enforcement
🔫 Have a lot more guns trib.al/KbZRbU1
If you want fewer young American adults to die, finding a way to stop the opioid epidemic would clearly save the most lives.

Reducing gun violence and driving, and installing lots more speed cameras, would help, too trib.al/KbZRbU1

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More from @bopinion

28 Jun
Recent research on the health effects of Covid-19 found that even mild cases could cause significant changes to the brain.

That makes “living with Covid” a risky and dangerous strategy trib.al/5xXxnGm
The @uk_biobank project involves half a million adults ranging in age from 40 to 69. They’ve collected:

🩸Blood samples
⚕️Detailed health info
🧠Thousands of scans & brain images

It's one of the most rigorous analyses of the effects of Covid on the brain trib.al/5xXxnGm
What makes the data unique is that they compare brain images before and after a Covid infection in the same people.

Even mild cases of Covid led to loss of volume in certain areas of the brain, specifically those involved in processing smell and taste trib.al/5xXxnGm
Read 9 tweets
27 Jun
In the same weekend:

➡️ China hit a milestone of delivering more than 1 billion vaccine doses
➡️ Brazil reached more than 500,000 Covid deaths

While the end of the pandemic is in sight, Covid is continuing to wreak havoc around the globe trib.al/vPwuzMf
The virus continues to devastate.

➡️ The developing world doesn’t have enough shots
➡️ Too many existing inequities have grown worse
➡️ There’s excess bureaucracy
trib.al/iwe0bKj
There’s no end to the cycle of coronavirus surges and lockdowns without vaccinations.

There must be a concerted push to get vaccines to the developing world soon — and not by backloading donations trib.al/iwe0bKj
Read 9 tweets
26 Jun
The tweeter who posted this comment on a recent Friday night clearly knew what was coming.

And in a sense, she was not wrong — it was an unpopular opinion. Her claim spawned thousands of satirical and scathing responses trib.al/ePUhGJo
A few, however, defended weekend work and argued that young people have little to offer besides elbow grease:

➡️Their technical skills aren’t developed
➡️Their networks are small
➡️Their hustle is what they’ve got to offer
trib.al/ePUhGJo
But does hustle mean working on the weekends? Not in every city. And does working on the weekends lead to riches? Not in every industry.

But in places like New York City and the Bay Area, long hours often have signaling power trib.al/ePUhGJo
Read 14 tweets
25 Jun
More than 150 years after the end of slavery, most Black families in the U.S. lack an essential part of the American dream: a home of their own.

Occasional efforts to address the problem have mostly failed — and sometimes they’ve made things worse trib.al/KkSLk3S
Federal housing policy played a central role in creating the American middle class. Beginning in the 1930s, government-subsidized mortgages enabled people to…

🏡Buy homes
🏘️Invest in communities
💰Build equity
🚸Pass wealth on to their children
twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…
Between 1934 and 1968, 98% of loans insured by the FHA went to White people.

The presence of a single Black family in a new subdivision was enough for them to refuse financing. The result was residential segregation and a legacy of entrenched disadvantage trib.al/KkSLk3S
Read 12 tweets
24 Jun
Millennials spent their early adulthood dogged by:

💰Two large recessions
🏡Rising housing prices
🎓Exploding student debt

It's no wonder they're less likely, even as they approach 40, to be married or own a home trib.al/CdKePKO
In modern history, each generation has typically been richer than the last, and surprisingly, millennials aren't any different.

A closer look at the data and a more inclusive definition of wealth reveals this often-maligned group is doing quite well twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…
But comparing generations is hard.

Things are different since the baby boomers were young. Getting paid a decent salary and having stability now often requires some education or training beyond high school trib.al/CdKePKO Image
Read 13 tweets
23 Jun
The world’s cargo ships can’t get their act together:

🚢There were the lines at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach
🚢The Ever Given got stuck in the Suez Canal for a week
🚢The port of Yantian in the Chinese city of Shenzhen is joining the fun
trib.al/DcTs1TB Image
If you think this issue will smooth itself out, you might be in for a shock.

The factors that have driven Asia-Europe container rates to record levels of more than $10,000 per 40-foot box aren’t a temporary problem. Returning to normality could take years twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…
The container shipping industry is usually such a well-oiled machine that we barely notice it. In 2016, you could shift a metric ton of goods from Shanghai to Rotterdam for $10.

The flip side of that is that when things go wrong, they go seriously wrong trib.al/DcTs1TB Image
Read 10 tweets

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