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U.S. life expectancy plunged in 2020, with Black Americans acutely affected.
Thursday’s figures give the first full picture of the pandemic’s effect on American expected life spans, which dropped to 77.8 years from 78.8 years in 2019. It also showed a deepening of racial and ethnic disparities: Life expectancy of the Black population declined by 2.7 years in the first half of 2020, after 20 years of gains. The gap between Black and white Americans, which had been narrowing, is now at six years, the widest since 1998. Still, unlike the drop caused by the extended, complex problem of drug overdoses, this one, driven largely by Covid-19, is not likely to last as long because virus deaths are easing and people are being vaccinated. In 1918, when hundreds of thousands of Americans died in the flu pandemic, life expectancy declined 11.8 years from the previous year, Dr. Arias said, down to 39. Numbers fully rebounded the following year.
Health Check: why swimming in the sea is good for you
<embed> https://theconversation.com/health-check-why-swimming-in-the-sea-is-good-for-you-68583 </embed> the Conversation December 25, 2016 3.41pm EST
Historically, doctors would recommend their patients go to the seaside to improve various ills. They would actually issue prescriptions detailing exactly how long, how often and under what conditions their patients were to be in the water. Using seawater for medical purposes even has a name: thalassotherapy.
To this day, healing and spa resorts by the seaside abound. They are thought of as places where people can not only let go of their troubles but, in some cases, even cure arthritis.
