US life expectancy has suffered a catastrophe — but some are still in denial
Life expectancy in America has fallen even more dramatically than in Britain during the Covid pandemic. The overall average figure from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a fall from 2019 to 2020 of 1.5 years to 77.3 years, with male life expectancy falling more steeply (1.8 years) than female (1.2 years). This compares to the Public Health England figures of 78.7 years for men and 82.7 years for women, a fall of 1.3 and 0.7 years respectively.
More than 3.3 million Americans died last year, the highest number in history, with Covid responsible for 11 per cent of deaths. Not since 1943 has life expectancy in the US dropped so abruptly in one year. The US is back to levels last seen in 2003.
Yet these raw figures conceal considerable disparities between different ethnic groups. Hispanics actually have a higher life expectancy than White or Black Americans, but they also registered the biggest fall: 3 years, 1.2 years and 2.9 years respectively. However, the really shocking figure that is buried in a difference set of data from the National Center for Health Statistics is the one for Black men, whose life expectancy is now down to just 68 years. And the full impact of the pandemic has yet to be seen, because many conditions went untreated last year, especially among poorer sections of society.
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten,” says the Psalmist. Not if you are a Black American man. For a large section of the American population to have a life expectancy well below the biblical span of 70 implies that there really is a demographic — and human — crisis in the Black community. In the case of Hispanic Americans, 90 per cent of the fall was due to Covid, but for Black people the figure was just 59.3 per cent. The second largest cause of death for all Americans was “unintentional injuries”, which includes the misuse of drugs, particularly opioids, and alcohol-related diseases. But last year also saw a sharp rise in homicides, which affect young Black men disproportionately, and this increase has continued so far in 2021. Even when the pandemic is over, these factors will continue to exercise an especially heavy impact on the lives of Black Americans, especially men.
The CDC figures show that while Hispanics on average still live longer than Whites, the gap has fallen from three years to just under two years. Black Americans lag even further behind Whites: the gap remains virtually unchanged at four years. Hence the grievance and victim culture that has fed the Black Lives Matter movement has a real basis in facts and figures.
Behind these raw and provisional statistics lie a multitude of individual tragedies. They also underlie a transformation in the zeitgeist. Most Americans have always seen themselves as uniquely fortunate, a perception still widely shared across the developing world. Generations of immigrants have sacrificed everything to share in the American dream. The city shining on a hill now feels tarnished, not just for most Black Americans but for many Whites too. Bad health outcomes are concealed by the overall statistics for the majority White population: the poorer members of the latter have nearly as low a life expectancy as their Black counterparts.
The most depressing aspect of these figures is the impression of a society that is going backwards. However tough life has always been for millions of ordinary Americans, what gave them hope was the prospect of bettering themselves and their children. The pandemic has not merely been a catastrophic setback in the long history of social progress, but has highlighted the regressive tendencies in a way of life that no longer feels like a model for the rest of the world.
Obesity has undoubtedly been a factor in high Covid mortality rates in the US, as it has in the UK. But so, too, has been the refusal to trust the authorities on vaccinations, lockdowns, mask-wearing and other measures. A lone medical voice has been raised against the extreme manifestations of anti-vaccination ideology on social media. From Birmingham, Alabama, Dr Brytney Cobia’s post on Facebook (pictured) has gone viral. She describes treating seriously ill young Covid patients in a city where only a third of the population have been willing to be vaccinated. By the time they are hospitalised, it is too late for the jab. The bereaved families are devastated: “They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political…They thought it was ‘just the flu’.”
Dr Cobia’s testimony is a terrible indictment of Donald Trump’s presidency and of those members of the Republican establishment who are still in denial about the pandemic. They and their followers can dismiss her plea to get the jab. The grim facts about life expectancy are, however, undeniable.
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