It’s one thing when government raises your taxes, suffocates your business with regulations or censors your tweets. It’s far worse when government is to blame for actually shortening your life.
US life expectancy dropped to 76.4 years, the lowest in a quarter-century, according to new federal data. Americans should be gasping. What could be more important than having the chance to live a long life?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention repeatedly has blown its response to mega health killers like fentanyl, COVID and lung cancer. All the while, life expectancy gets shorter and shorter.
Americans had one of the best life expectancies in the world in 1980. Since then, the United States has lost ground. People live several years longer in France, Switzerland, Italy and other highly developed countries, reaching ages 83 or 84 on average. Residents of the Czech Republic, Chile and Slovenia also can expect longer lives than Americans.
Even before COVID, the United States ranked 29th in life expectancy, per the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The virus merely widened an already-alarming gap between America and other nations.
Smoking-related lung cancer, seen on a radial section chest CT scan.
Lung cancer is the No. 1 cancer killer, taking 130,000 lives a year.
Universal Images Group via Getty
Now life expectancy in these other countries is rebounding from COVID, while American lives continue to be cut short due to other causes.
