It was an ordinary day. Reading a story about how long I will probably live. As I began to read the story I realized I had never in my life read a story about how long I could expect to live. Have you? And...does it matter? For me...I'll live until I die! Won't we all? Well, the article I found online (now that's probably the first problem) told me that the life expectancy in the United States fell by a year and a half in 2020. Holy cow! Maybe I missed the cutoff and should have died 6 months ago and didn't know it until I read the story. Now what do I do? The reason that my life, and your life also, will not be as long is due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That's according to data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They reported that..."U.S. life expectancy at birth for 2020, based on nearly final data (whatever nearly final data might be), was 77.3 years, the lowest it has been since 2003. Life expectancy declined from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77.3 years in 2020. COVID-19 deaths contributed to 73.8% of that decline. The report was based on provisional data from death and birth records for the year 2020, processed by the National Center for Health Statistics. The study relies on recorded deaths and births; but some deaths or births that had not yet been counted or recorded were not included in the early data. Oh, so that's the reason I may die sooner. It's due to someone not being counted on time. Anyway, the researchers found that life expectancy for men fell from 76.3 yers in 2019 to 74.5 in 2020 and life expectancy for women dropped from 81.4 years in 2019 to 80.2 in 2020. OK...now I have to worry once again. I didn't realize that I should be dead by now according to statistics. Who are these people who like to play God and scare you about how long you will likely live? If it were me, I'd have everyone living until they are 94.2 or perhaps 98.1. It all will depend on the month you were born. I want everyone to live to be the same age. But wait...there are some racial disparities that I found out about as I began to read a bit more. Hispanic people experienced the largest decline in life expectancy between 2019 and 2020, primarily due to COVID-19, decreasing by three years from 81.8 years to 78.8 years. And, life expectancy fell by 2.9 years for Black people from 74.7 years to 71.8 years. Seems that just about all the numbers falling are due to the COVID-19 problem. Mortality due to COVID-19 had, by far, the single greatest effect on the decline in life expectancy at birth between 2019 and 2020, overall, among men and women, and for the three races shown in the statistics. Other reasons for the decline in life expectancy was unintentional injuries, homicide, diabetes and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. But, the more I read the better I began to feel since if it hadn't been for the COVID-19 problem, I may have aded a few years on to my life since there were decreases in chronic lower respiratory diseases, heart disease, suicide and certain perinatal conditions. Seems that COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in the United States last year. The top 10 leading causes of death in 2020 were:
1. Heart Disease...2. Cancer...3. COVID 19...4. Unintentional injury...5. Stroke...6. Chronic lower respiratory disease...7. Alzheimer's disease...8. Diabetes...9. Influenza and pneumonia...10. Kidney disease.
So...should I worry about the deduction in the amount of time I will live? Nah...I won't remember any of those figures when I die, anyway. And...neither will you. We all will be one big statistic for those who enjoy scaring us with all these predictions as to how long we will live. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy...and I enjoyed every minute of it!
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