Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 1d

It looks like access to the mortality data I have used to post here is being changed by the Trump administration. They make claims that they are fixing data problems, the problem is anything that will show what they are doing is "bad" by Trump's definition. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News

10 41

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 2d

This is exactly what I have been thinking, As I remember the Democratic voting states are paying about 70% of the Federal income taxes. I might add that the billionaires, who the Republicans listen to, pay very little.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 2d

The Southern Baptist offer their own health insurance. It is very cheap and the state percent Southern Baptist is second only to percent who smoke in predicting higher state death rates. It iss even stronger than percent uninsured.

1

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3d

Here I show changes in death rates from 1999 through 2020 for the United States population divided into age groups determined by how their health care is paid for, 0, 1-19, 20-64 and 65-84. Age 85+ is excluded because nobody lives through it. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population

I present graphs using this color coded pattern for all four age groups displayed here. The groups are based on how health care is provide, especially paid for. Age 0 is special and highly variable by state in ways that are not consistently related to how other ages are cared for. During this time, the United States has reduced death rates so much that we actually have lower death rates than Canada for this age group. The thing to remember is this shows us how death rates changed from 1999 through 2020. That does have an effect on actual level but the states that entered this period with higher death rates found it easier to bring the death rates down than the states that entered with lower death rates, this is especially the case for Utah and Maine.

Now to the next age group.

Age group 1-19, is also unique because the primary way for paying for health care, capitalist health insurance, is backed up by highly variable state funded care for the young that are not covered by by the primary method. This age group has the lowest death rates and because of that, they have minimal effects on measures like life expectancy that count deaths by all ages to be calculated.

In general, these younger people, like the under age one group have a positive effect on state life expediencies during these two decades.

Next, the group most exclusive provided health care through the most capitalist part of our health care system, ages 20-64.

This is our age group that is dominated by the correlations that show increasing death rates, positive values of r. New York is the only state with a negative correlation and it is only a -0.04 soon followed by California and Nevada with r's below 0.15.

In general this graph displays the death rate changes for the only part of the earth's population with industrialize economies that generally experienced increasing death rates during this time period.

In general I feel we will not stop this evil increase in our death rates until we follow the rest of the economically developed part of the world and get rid of capitalist funded health care.

Now the last graph, for ages 65-84.

Sorry, I don't know why I made this one so wide, but it still shows that it is the most solidly almost white graph. Again, this does not mean they are all at the same level, it just means that they all have the most consistently declining death rates. What I find most amazing is that this has been going on for a quarter of a century if we exclude the recent COVID deaths and our most extreme idiocy is our ignoring our middle age increasing death rates while our elderly have declining death rates!

The main thing this shows us is that the major capitalist funded health care in the economically developed part of our earth's population that has consistently shown increasing death rates is this capitalist funded part, our middle aged. And things are looking like they will be adding our elderly to the middle aged system of denying health care to make the rich richer.

If Trump succeeds in ending democracy in the United States and establishing a totally rich dominated political system, we will experience a long period of increasing death rates for the sole purpose of making the richest people in the world richer.

1 1 9

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3d

I am a sociologist/demographer sewage systems prevent epidemics that kill a large percent of the population. I put them near the top of human inventions that keep us alive longer.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3d

It took a while to put together. Thanks for the complement.

2

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 4d

Here are the United States with a number that says where their life expectancy fits in the CIA ranking of countries. The text under the graph has a link so you can go to the CIA World Fact Book and see which countries are around a state you are interested in: 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population

To see which countries are close to states you are interested in go to:

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/life-expectancy-at-birth/country-comparison/

There you can scroll down to find the countries around the states you are interested in. Also while on that web page you can click on the country name and it will take you to a page that will give you a lot of information about a country.

A final note: The CIA lists the United States as having a longer life expectancy than any of the states. That is logically impossible if they are calculated the same way. I will conclude by noting that I think the CIA exaggerates the United States life expectancy.

1 6 37

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 4d

A large portion of this is the Southern Baptist and some related Evangelicals using prayer for health care. While the United States pays the most for health care our CIA ranks us 49th in life expectancy. The Southern Baptist relying of prayer for health care is a major part of it. It kills!

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 4d

Southern Baptist are heavy users of prayer for health care. It doesn’t work!

1 1

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 4d

The pattern exists in the great majority of causes, it can only be limited access to science based health care. It could be part Southern Baptist using prayer and part middle age lack of health insurance and health insurance denying care.

1

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 4d

For what it is worth, the "high criminal Hispanics" is nothing but a Trump lie. The limited data show Hispanics are about 60% as criminal as non-Hispanic whites and if you standardize by age it drops down to about 45%.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 5d

I think I am in the longest time between BlueSky post since I started. I have been working on measuring the relationship between percent Southern Baptist and death rates when I ran into a problem with the data it was based on I will delete it. See more by clicking ALT. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population

Here are the correlations between consecutive decades that moved me doubt the measure of percent Southern Baptist by decade form 1980 through 2020: 0.9979 0.9978 0.9962 0.9951

Since there is no way that something measuring human behavior every ten years on the state level would be correlated at this high a level, I moved to looking for another way to measure the level of Southern Baptist participation by state. I turned to the on-line Yellow pages and collected the number of Southern Baptist churches listed in each state. It only took about an hour to do this and it only measures it five years after the 1980 through 2020 time period covered so it is not problem free. But the scatter plot shows it is consistently a better measure than that produced for each decade. I am now working with this measure of the state level of Southern|Baptist and death rates over the last few years. When that is done, I will post those findings.

Since the one post I made several days ago was based on the data with this problem, I am going to delete that post if possible.

4

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 6d

Prayer is their primary health care tool. The Southern Baptist church got church based health care attached to Obama care. Do an internet search for "Southern Baptist health insurance" They don't mention using prayer in their adds but they do. Also national gets half of the $ given in church.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 7d

Actually, I do use Excel to make the graph but I can't figure out how to make the line follow the dots. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

1

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 7d

I have Excel but I am having difficulty learning to use much of what it can do. My problem is I had an encephalitis infection of my brain about 17 years ago and my brain has been very slow to recover and I probably won't live long enough, I am now 82, to get much more back. I will keep at it.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 7d

Trump is operating form stereotypes based of the United States' fascist ideology that happens to be anti city and pro rural. Well, here are the age 10-64 and 65-84 deaths rates from 1999-2020 for the census's six urbanization levels. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News

First the basic pattern, the more urbanized the lower the Non-Hispanic White aged 20-64 death rates and the less they increased over the last two decades. But they all have increased. The only two lines of dots to cross over this time are the metropolitan central metros versus the large fringe metro. The largest suburbs started out doing the best but they have been passed by the largest central cities.

The most noticeable pattern is that the distance between the most rural and most urbanized has just about doubled over this time. Now the other thing I can think about that might be contributing to this is the more urbanized an area, the more Democratic it is.

Another factor is Trump seems to be pushing health care to close more hospitals in the most rural areas, aka, the most Republican voting areas.

But the main point is that these death rates should not have been going up during this time. The most common mortality pattern in the industrialized world during these years has been a declining death rate.

The other graph uses the exactly same methods but the population is aged 65-84.

This is not the first time I have compared death rate trends for our capitalist health insurance versus our most socialized health care, Medicare. But this is the first time I have shown it broken down by levels of urbanization. I have to end this with 2020 data because I can't get the same for later years yet.

Here the large fringe metro area dominates the bottom line and the gap between them and the next one is much larger than the gap for any of the middle aged neighboring lines of mortality dots. Here we also have some increases in the distance between the top and bottom line over time, but it is much less pronounced here than among the middle aged.

Well, I can't think of anything else to write except: Eschew Obfuscation.

4 21

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 8d

The software I have doesn't do it that way.

1

Reposted by Dr. James H. Gundlach

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 11d

Here I allow you to compare how big an effect the amount a state spends per-capita on health care to state percent Southern Baptist are related to state age 20-64 death rates in 2023. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #News #Think

I have a bad habit of only looking at strong relationships between variables, this is the exception. Here, r=-0.05, b=-.002. The surprising thing is this graph shows the relationship between how much the state spends per person for health care and and the state's age 20-64 death rate. If you look hard at that blue line running through the middle of the graph you can see that it is going down a little as the amount spent on health care increases from about $8,000 to $14,000 per year.

OK, look at the other graph and see how the effect percent Southern Baptist compares.

Here is one variable that as far as I know I am the only one to relate to state death rates. Here the r=0.75 and b=4.8. If you moved from the hypothetical state with no Southern Baptist, the predicted death rate for age 20-64 would be 173.3 while the state with 100% Southern Baptist has a predicted death rate of 653.7. Steven Woolf, the person I consider the major researcher of United States mortality gave up trying to explain the United States high death rate because he could not statistically explain it. I think he would have succeeded if he had added percent Southern Baptist to his multiple regression equation.

5 16

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 11d

Here I allow you to compare how big an effect the amount a state spends per-capita on health care to state percent Southern Baptist are related to state age 20-64 death rates in 2023. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #News #Think

5 16

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 12d

A lot of Non-Hispanic Whites death rates for aged 50-54 from 1999-2000. The major problem with this graph is that most readers will have difficulty figuring out which line applies to them. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News

As I look at this graph the major thing I see is that rural to metropolitan differences in death rates have grown dramatically during the last couple of decades. The large central city population is the only one to experience any declining death rates and those are mostly in the last half of the graph before COVID hit in the last year. Next to them in doing well is the large city suburbs, which essentially bounced around the same level all the time. The others have generally increased and the more rural the larger the increase. Just look at the difference between the top and bottom dots in 1999 with 2019, the last year before COVID hit cause that last bump up. Does this look like what the people in the country that spend the most for health care should be getting for their money? As a side note, Canadians spend just a little over half as much as people in the United States does for health care and their life expectancy is 3.2 years longer than ours.

I know many of you will not be able to figure out which line describes where you live you can go to the below link to get the technical description, my feeling is it will only help some of you to know which line fits where you live:

https://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/help/ucd.html#2013%20Urbanization

The major differences between this graph and some similar ones I have posted early is this one is limited to Non-Hispanic Whites aged 50-54 and it shows the most increase in differences between levels of urbanization.

1 6

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 13d

Putting scientific findings behind a pay wall is done to make the rich richer but it makes science less effective.

1 2

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 14d

The numbers on this map show the percent of a state's age 0-84 2021-2023 deaths that would not have happened if the state experienced Canada's age grouped death rates for the same years. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #News #Think

These are simple numbers, the percent of each state's deaths in 2021 through 2023, that would not have happened if the state had experienced Canada's age specific death rates for the same years. Need I say more?

2 8

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 14d

NO.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 15d

Any examples of when causation has been discovered with out being suggested without correlation? How many correlation produced experiments refute the correlations?

1

Reposted by Dr. James H. Gundlach

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 15d

Here I look at the relationship between state percent attending church at four levels of frequency of attendance and state total 2023 death rate in four graphs.🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Think #News

Here you can see the line showing the regression analysis relationship between state level of weekly church attendance and total population's deaths per 100,000. The correlation, r, = .48 with a regression coefficient of 7.98. and a predicted death rate for the hypothetical state with no one attending church weekly of 749.4 per 100,000 in 2023. The predicted death rate for the hypothetical state with 100% weekly church attendance is 1557.1 deaths per 100,000. Go to the next graph to see how the monthly church attenders are predicted to die.

Here the predicted death rate for the hypothetical state state with no monthly church attenders. is 928.4 deaths per 100,000. The regression coefficient, b, of 3.42 means that goes up 3.42 deaths per 100,000 for each additional percent who attend monthly and the hypothetical state that has 100 percent attending monthly adds 341.8 deaths to the predicted at zero percent or 1270.2 deaths per. 100,000. In reality this is a weak relationship, just look how close to level that line in the scatter-plot is.

Now to people who attend about once a year in the next graph.

When we have people who attend less than monthly but at least once a year, the line clearly goes down. In fact it goes down so much with each increase in the percent attending church yearly that a prediction at 100% is too unrealistic to even use to suggest the magnitude of the effect. But in general, compared to the people who attend church more often hitting church on Christmas or Easter seems to be a good way to go.

Now to the complete non-attenders.

Here is the last graph, the total non-church goers. The correlation, r = -.33 with an intercept of 1200.1 and a slope, b, of -4.97. The predicted death rate for the hypothetical population of 100 percent non-church goers is 703.1, essentially 500 deaths below the intercept, the predicted value for no non-church goers.

The underlying question is what causes the positive relationship between weekly church attendance and the higher death rate. I think the cause is the use of prayer for health care among the Southern Baptist. Back when Obama care was passed, the religious fundamentalist managed to get the new law to allow them to provide health care, including their own health insurance policies. The research problem is that it is just an indirectly measured variable. From contact with neighbors in rural Alabama, I know it exists but I have no way of measuring it.

My recommendation is to move to government funded total health care that eliminates the profit motive to deny care. But it will not happen during the Trump administration.

2 1 8