Why is the death rate increasing in the US but not other high-income countries? It isn’t due to COVID-19. The death rate from COVID has dropped significantly. Also, the death rate had been rising in the US long before the pandemic.
As reported in an excellent article in JAMA, “After 2010, life expectancy flatlined in the US while continuing to increase in other high-income countries.” (The article is cited at the end of this blog.)
Why? There are several causes: the opioid epidemic, an obesity epidemic, drug overdoses, alcohol-related deaths, more suicides and homicides, more deaths from neurological diseases (mainly Alzheimer’s), increasing diabetes (probably from rising levels of obesity), hypertension and kidney failure, heart diseases such as heart failure, more injuries, and more deaths in young women during pregnancy and childbirth.
Why are these factors worse in the US? There is less clarity as to what the underlying causes are; we are clear about our excess mortality rate.
Here are some likely factors: “addiction,” unhealthy “American diet” with too many processed foods and consumption of too many calories, “greater access to firearms,” “lack of universal healthcare” for all except seniors age 65 and older, “loneliness” and “lack of social support,” “lack of spiritual anchors,” and possibly “inflation,” “unstable employment,” “food and housing insecurity,” and “chronic stress.”
As a nation, we need to have a comprehensive plan to deal effectively with these problems.
I will end this blog with a sad sentence from the article cited below. “The life expectancy gap between the US and other countries widened greatly before the pandemic, and US losses to COVID-19 were higher than in peer countries.”
The article that formed the basis for this blog is: Woolf SH. Increasing mortality rates in the US, but not from COVID-19. JAMA Aug 29, 2024. doi:10.1001/jama.2024.13626
(All quotes in the blog are from this excellent article.)
Peter M. Hartmann, MD
Family Medicine & Psychiatry
