Before 1946, conquering disease would have seemed as much a subject of science fiction as putting a man on the moon. But since 1950, global life expectancy has risen by four years each decade. Smallpox has been eradicated, and polio and malaria cases have dramatically fallen. Within the past 80 years, there have perhaps been more significant advances in human health than there were in the previous 300,000.
~ Vann Newkirk via The Atlantic
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That is not to say America’s particular system of public health was ever perfect. Owing partly to the legacy of segregation, the country never developed a universal health-insurance program, and maintains a fragmented health-care system in which both class and race still dictate much of a patient’s access to care. Many people on the margins who have wanted to get screened for certain diseases or vaccinated against them have not been able to do so, because they cannot afford to or because no doctor will serve them.
~ Vann Newkirk via The Atlantic
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America is unique, and comparisons are difficult. The country easily outpaces the rest of the developed world in gun deaths and overdoses, both major mortality drivers here that have largely been accepted as the cost of being American. But even if you discount those peculiarities, plenty of other indicators are pointing the wrong way.
~ Vann Newkirk via The Atlantic
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Despite all of our advantages, the coronavirus pandemic caused more confirmed deaths per capita in the United States than in any other Western country, and our mortality rate’s recovery has lagged behind others’. Life expectancy in the U.S. is lower than in other high-income nations, and the gulf is widening.
~ Vann Newkirk via The Atlantic
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If the American state disintegrates, future postmortems are unlikely to focus much on measles, or on rotavirus vaccination rates. But the ability to beat back our more routine pathological menaces is a good indicator of the country’s ability to take on bigger, more virulent threats. The thing about bacteria and viruses, our most ancient foes, is that they are always at the gates, waiting for lean times. Among them will be pathogens worse than the coronavirus.
~ Vann Newkirk via The Atlantic
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the “Make America Healthy Again” moment is in some ways just another step in the long retreat of the civic trust and communitarian spirit that have enabled America’s disease-fighting efforts. If this retreat continues, the public-health era—the century-long period of unprecedented epidemiological safety that has been the foundation for so many other breakthroughs—will come to an end. And that end will have dire consequences for this republic and its future.
~ Vann Newkirk via The Atlantic
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Over the past 50 years, American trust in the medical system has declined, as has trust in government, science, and expertise in general. The coronavirus pandemic exploded those trends, creating the world in which we now find ourselves. Public-health agencies did themselves no favors: They often gave out confusing and sometimes conflicting advice. Conspiracy theories grew quickly on social media, and measures such as masking became subject to partisan polarization.
~ Vann Newkirk via The Atlantic
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One of the better measures of a society’s vitality is its ability to protect its citizens from disease, and the two often move in tandem; a decline in one may produce a reduction in the other,
~ Vann Newkirk via The Atlantic
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As much as any other institution—schools, libraries, churches—the public-health system has helped propagate the idea of a commons, often working against historical inertia to curb the excesses of American individualism. That work has always required energy and effort from the people. And so it has always been vulnerable, because that energy and effort could dissipate at any time.
~ Vann Newkirk via The Atlantic
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Men famously think about Rome every day, and political commentators have been nervously comparing Rome’s fall to a potential American collapse since before America even had a Constitution.
~ Vann Newkirk via The Atlantic
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