I would be curious to see more recent data, but this was from a Scientific American article pre-COVID.

    by Goodginger

    18 Comments

    1. Is this surprising? The average age of Hawaii residents is 8 years longer than Mississippi or West Virginia residents. 

    2. Mistrust of the medical establishment and fewer healthcare resources in Republican-dominated rural areas

    3. People used to know how dumb they were and actually listen to advice and fall in line. Now everyone has access to infinite validation on the internet and think they know everything and listen to nobody.

    4. Republicans represent a lot of poor and uneducated people looking to blame someone other than the wealthy and powerful interests that dictate their entire party’s platform.

    5. That graph is pretty self explanatory. The red line is flat since around 2010 and the blue line keeps dropping.

      That would suggest that people on the blue line are taking advantage of new scientific advances and red people aren’t.

    6. The_Bjorn_Identity on

      This is the kind of thing thats hard to *scientifically* pinpoint but, like, we all know why

    7. Diet. The American diet is horrible. And nobody mentions the biggest issue: sugar!

      We have been lied to about how had sugar is for us. It is worse than alcohol yet we happily feed it to children.

    8. So I recently asked my doctor for a prescription to get the newly restricted COVID vaccine. I figured the idiots in the health department had made this mandatory. I found out that NYS does not restrict the COVID vaccine and I can just go get it at the local pharmacy. Maybe sensible decisions help people in blue states live longer?

    9. Effective public health interventions are usually practical, boots on the ground stuff, not necessarily new innovations- accessible clinics, affordable preventative care, pollution control, access to nutritious food and safe housing, addiction treatment, road and pedestrian safety, that kinda thing. It’s done by infrastructure and social programs which need government investment. Republicans tend to cut those investments. 

    10. CanadianLadyMoose on

      Red states have:

      – Less and often worse education (creationism in science classes, abstinence only sex ed)

      – More guns

      – higher obesity rates

      – less access and to worse Healthcare (such as rural communities having fewer hospitals, and smaller hospitals that have to transfer patients elsewhere for procedures when they lack equipment)

      – distrust of medical science leading to lower vaccination rates, fewer checkups, less pediatric involvement, and inappropriate/harmful experimental home treatments

      – more privatized/less regulated industries and thus worse infrastructure leading to poorer air, soil, and water qualities

      – more likely to legalize and participate in inbreeding (first cousin marriages)

      – lower rates of post secondary education

      – low media literacy, low media access

    11. Gullible-Apricot3379 on

      Red counties tend to be rural. Blue counties tend to be urban.

      I wonder how this would chart against a metric like average distance from a hospital, or more specifically, from a stroke center or trauma center.

    12. For the same reason that the the value you can gain from an investment is unlimited, but the most you can lose is 100%. The floor is the floor. There’s no ceiling. We still have stone-age tribes on this planet! And we almost certainly will when we land people on Mars.

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