For Star Trek Vulcans, the polite way to say good-bye is to say, “Live long and prosper.” For a Vulcan landing on Earth today, the possibility of that wish coming true depends a lot on what country the Vulcan visitor lands in. It would be more of a stretch if the spacefarers had landed in the United States, than if they had landed in any of sixteen other high income countries. The June 2021 issue of the British Medical Journal (The BMJ), contains an article that directly relates to long life. Its title is “Effect of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020 on life expectancy across populations in the USA and other high income countries: simulations of provisional mortality data.”
It’s too early for full 2020 mortality data to be available, either for the USA or for any of the other sixteen high income nations, so the authors ran simulations based on data that is available. One thing that is known for sure is that in 2020, more Americans died of Covid-19 than did the residents of any other country, high income or not. Even countries with far larger populations, such as India and China, have had fewer Covid-19 deaths than has the United States.
The sixteen high-income countries analyzed are:
- Austria
- Belgium
- Denmark
- Finland
- France
- Israel
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Norway
- Portugal
- South Korea
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Taiwan
- United Kingdom
A number of other countries might also be peers, but were not included because of incomplete data.
Between 2010 and 2018, USA life expectancy was essentially flat, while that of the sixteen listed peer countries showed a rise in life expectancy. Things were different in 2020. While life expectancy in the USA increased by 0.08 years between 2010 and 2018, it decreased by 1.87 years between 2018 and 2020, a huge turnaround. For Americans aged 65, the decrease was 5.7 years, shaving off most of their remaining life expectancy.
The gap in life expectancy between the USA and the sixteen peer nations analyzed grew steadily between 2010 to and 2018. In 2010 the average resident of a peer nation lived 1.88 years longer than the average American. In 2018, that gap had grown to 3.05 years. The growth of that gap over an eight year span is significant, but it pales in comparison with the gap between peers and Americans between 2018 and 2020, which was a whopping 4.69 years over only two years. The USA fell behind the peer countries by more in two years than they had in the previous eight. This is directly attributable to Covid-19 and to the failure of the USA to address the crisis as well as the peer countries did.
The decrease in life expectancy in the USA was 8.5 times the average loss in the 16 peer nations, and was the largest loss since 1943, when the world was embroiled in World War II.
In 2020, all-cause mortality in the USA increased by 23%. Disturbing as that is, the second shoe has not yet dropped. Long COVID is sure to claim even more lives, as the lingering effects of the disease claim additional victims.
If you want to live long and prosper, the USA is a great place for that, as long as you avoid Covid-19. What may be even better is to live in one of the sixteen peer nations that appear to have a better handle on the pandemic.