In my free and it-don’t-cost-nuthin’ class notes Breaking the Law of Averages (pdf), I have a homework question which goes something like this: Explain why, no matter the goodness of our hearts or the extreme depths of our caring, we will never remove the Leading Cause Of Death.
If you haven’t seen this before, then do pause for a moment before reading further. See if you can figure it out.
The reason is simple. Right now heart disease is the leading cause of death—in the once United States, anyway. In countries where the elite in the USA meddle, there are differences. But never mind. Cancer is close behind heart disease. Suppose tomorrow they come up with an ask-your-doctor-is-profitol-is-right-for-you pill that cures heart disease. I mean, it really does work, and nobody (who takes it) dies from heart disease.
The leading cause of death will then be cancer. Indeed, there will be a dramatic and sudden increase in cancer deaths all over the country. So many new cancers deaths will arrive that even celebrities will be employed to Raise Awareness Of Cancer.
Hands will be wrung. Propagandists will frown and look serious. Researchers will spring into action and write grants galore to show why everything from Aardvark piss to Zagnut consumption is linked to or associated with the surge in cancers. We will have more wee Ps shoved in our faces than at a San Francisco “pride” parade.
When the answer is obvious: if you can’t die from heart disease, you’re going to die from something else.
And that something else will likely be cancer. Cancer will become the Leading Cause Of Death. If it isn’t cancer, it will necessarily be something else. You can never eliminate the Leading Cause Of Death.
It may also be stroke. Consider how the covid panic killed off a lot of old people, especially in mandated medical maniac localities like New York. Aged folks who ordinarily would have died from heart disease were classed as dying from covid, and whether those diagnoses will all correct or not, the old were indeed culled at much greater rates than usual for about two and a half years. Maladies like CHF and other forms of bad tickers didn’t marry well with covid (or with flu).
We’d therefore expect a relative increase in other forms of death after the panic, given the older population was reduced during it. Cancer was somewhat constant before and during the panic. I haven’t seen any numbers since, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find an uptick there. Nor with stroke, which is usually the number three killer.
Which, at last, brings us to our headline of the day: “Global Stroke Burden Continues to Rise, With Climate Change Gaining Influence”.
…the link between stroke and climate change-related factors—like ambient temperature and air pollution—appears to be getting stronger…
Does it.
The continuing rise in global stroke burden indicates that approaches to managing the problem need to change, including by moving away from common risk-based efforts that have the medical community focusing on individuals deemed to be at highest risk, [Valery Feigin] argued…
Prior GBD analyses have shown that the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, including stroke, increased steadily between 1990 and 2019, with an overall slowing of the decline in CVD-related mortality—and increases in some parts of the world—over time. Moreover, a previous stroke-related analysis with data through 2019 demonstrated that stroke remained the second leading cause of death in the world behind ischemic heart disease.
And just what happened in 2020?
In their current paper, the investigators provide an update on the situation using data gathered through 2021 from 204 countries and territories….
Not surprisingly, Feigin said, stroke burden continued to rise on a global scale, even as rates of new and prevalent cases, deaths, and DALYs [disability-adjusted life-years] stayed on the decline in most areas. In 2021, there were an estimated 11.9 million new stroke events (up 70.2% from 1990), 93.8 million stroke survivors (up 86.1%), 7.3 million related deaths (up 44.1%), and 160.5 million related DALYs (up 32.2%) worldwide.
Well then. (We can quarrel with DALYs another day: I don’t like swapping real measures for “adjusted” ones.)
The paper says stroke was killer #3 in 2021 after heart disease and—drumroll—covid.
Then came the regressions. Models cramming everything, or near enough to everything, in to find correlations, which they insinuate are causes.
The risks included in the analysis were ambient particulate matter pollution; household air pollution from solid fuels; low ambient temperature (daily temperatures below the TMREL); high ambient temperature (daily temperatures above the TMREL); lead exposure; diet high in sodium; diet high in red meat; diet high in processed meat; diet low in fruits; diet low in vegetables; diet low in wholegrains; alcohol use (any alcohol dosage consumption); diet high in sugar-sweetened beverages; diet low in fibre; diet low in omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids; low physical activity (only for ischaemic stroke burden); smoking; second-hand smoke; high BMI; high fasting plasma glucose; high systolic blood pressure; high LDL cholesterol (only for ischaemic stroke burden); and kidney dysfunction, as measured by low glomerular filtration rate (not assessed for subarachnoid haemorrhage burden).
Most of this stuff will be measured very poorly, or by proxy, which makes it next to useless. But they had large numbers, which practically guarantee wee Ps (or mathematically equivalent narrow confidence intervals around non-existent model parameters).
They couldn’t help trying riding the “climate change” gravy train. But it threw them onto the tracks—and they didn’t even know it. They tracked four kinds of strokes, and only in one (subarachnoid haemorrhage) do they boast of “significant” effects of temperature. And even these were at the bottom of the list of correlates, with low ambient temperature having slightly more risk than high ambient temperature. The dangers of global cooling!
What do we conclude? We only dare to live in a narrow range of temperatures? Or else risk only one kind of stroke?
The “effects” of the other measures never had the same order, either, except for high blood pressure and smoking (breaking news).
The whole thing is hilariously asinine.
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My enemies stole my P.
It has been restored.
I came across an interesting observation the other day; “the government never fought so hard against
fentanyl as they did against ivermectin.” Tells you all you need to know about where their priorities lie.
Exactly, and this is why the “war” on chronic disease will fail. For those in the back, this is called survivor bias. There are three large buckets that you can put causes of death into: 1. trauma, 2. infections, 3. everything else. “And the span of a man’s years shall be 120”.