More statistics

Prompted to look at refences 1 and 2 the other day by an email from Medscape, people who turn up all kinds of both odd and interesting stuff with a vaguely medical flavour. I got as far as wondering what the chart snapped above tells us. Should we care that we appear to be slipping down the world league table of life expectancy, while Japan is holding steady at or near the top? And while France, rather more like us in other ways, which had been holding steady above us, may be starting to slip down?

Skimming (the quite short) reference 2 this morning, I am not all that much the wiser, although I am now wondering why the authors left the US off the chart above, one of the countries which has done even worse than the UK, with one point in common between them being the huge and growing gap between rich and poor.

I learn nothing about the countries who are making it to the top of the league.

I am reminded that in the middle of the 20th century, the UK still had the trappings and standing of a big and important country. That is much less true now.

But I am still wondering whether we should care. If we choose to spend what dosh we have on more goodies now rather than on more health to come, is not that a reasonable life style choice for a country to make? Or should the gloss be that the rich are getting richer, in part at least, by cutting back on health for the poor?

I had hoped for rather more.

PS 1: chart notwithstanding, life expectancy in this country is still growing.

PS 2: I have been irritated by one of the authors before. See reference 3. Plus a walk-on part at the rather more recent reference 4.

PS 3: not best pleased this morning to find that Microsoft's Edge has taken another slice off my screen. So where we had the top two rows of the screen for tabs and current address and the bottom row for the task bar, there is now an additional task bar in a right hand column, including important items like shopping and games. Not to mention something called E-tree. Will I get around to learning how to turn it off? This on top of Edge becoming ever more intrusive, with ever more unwanted pop-ups.

References

Reference 1: UK Sliding Down the Ranks of Global Life Expectancy - Dr Sheena Meredith, Medscape - 2023.

Reference 2: Falling down the global ranks: life expectancy in the UK, 1952–2021 - Lucinda Hiam, Danny Dorling, Martin McKee - 2023.

Reference 3: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/search?q=danny+dorling.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/global-warming.html.