...largely because the U.S. was right up there with Brazil and Peru in mishandling the pandemic disaster, aided and abetted of course by one of its two main political parties, the Repugs. From the NYT report:
The average life expectancy of Americans fell precipitously in 2020 and 2021, the sharpest two-year decline in nearly 100 years and a stark reminder of the toll exacted on the nation by the continuing coronavirus pandemic.
In 2021, the average American could expect to live until the age of 76, federal health researchers reported on Wednesday. The figure represents a loss of almost three years since 2019, when Americans could expect to live, on average, nearly 79 years....
While the pandemic has driven most of the decline in life expectancy, a rise in accidental deaths and drug overdoses also contributed, as did deaths from heart disease, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, the new report found....
While other high-income countries were also hard hit in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, most had begun to recover by last year, he said.
“None of them experienced a continuing fall in life expectancy like the U.S. did, and a good number of them saw life expectancy start inching back to normal,” Dr. Woolf said.
Those countries had more successful vaccination campaigns and populations that were more willing to take behavioral measures to prevent infections, such as wearing masks, he said, adding: “The U.S. is clearly an outlier.”
American "exceptionalism"--whether in response to a public health crisis, or guns, or economic inequality in a rich nation--is gradually making America exceptionally unlivable.
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