New research reveals longevity gains slowing, life expectancy of 100 unlikely

I believe this is mostly due to misdirected healthcare efforts.

I think we could get the average life expectancy up to 100 if we did a better job of all the preventative things:

* Prevent airborne disease by having all indoor spaces getting 50 air changes/filters per hour.

* Prevent waterborne disease by having all tap water RO treated in homes, and by heating all shit up to boiling point before it leaves toilets.

* Large scale animal and human trials of every chemical used in daily life to find those things like a pacifier which gives you cancer 60 years later. It is far better to do an 'unethical' trial of a chemical than the current system of just putting it in all products and going bankrupt later.

* Prevent spread of other diseases like the common cold with daily covid-like lateral flow tests for everyone, with the government bringing you food and paying you to stay home if infected with any spreadable disease.

* Work on many more vaccines and give them out for free to the whole world to eliminate more diseases like we did with smallpox (that vaccine has saved around 800 million lives).

* Dramatically reduced effort on individual treatment (cancer, care homes, etc) by putting a 200% tax on healthcare, and funnelling that money into preventative things so the next generation doesn't get the health issues at all.

> daily covid-like lateral flow tests for everyone

How would you prevent people from abusing this system? Covid tests were simple to get to show a positive result, and I know some people who would make this instantly unsustainable.

I'd have the tests not show a simple line, but instead a complex checkerboard pattern you scan with a phone. The scan results would simultaneously test for 100+ diseases, and be uploaded to some department of health server which would then decide if you specifically should be paid to stay home.

That decision can be made based on fraud risk, but also on the benefit to society of that person not spreading that disease further. For example if a disease has already infected most of the town in the last few weeks, it makes no sense for someone to stay home because local immunity is already probably high and further spread unlikely.

However the first case in a new town would 100% be worth staying home for to avoid infecting thousands of others.

The main causes of death in the US are literally sloth and gluttony, none of your points adress that. If people wanted to live long the single most effective thing they can do is exercise and eat clean, apparently the vast majority of people simply don't care.

This sounds like RFK's type of "medicine". The number of people dying from transmissible diseases is a lot less than people dying from heart attacks, cancer, etc. which are linked a lot more to lifestyle than to diseases.

European here. I've been to the US and holy mother of Jesus, you put sooooo much sugar into everything. I had to buy 'European' bread because your normal bread made my gums hurt, and even then that was the sweetest bread I've ever eaten.

Seriously, when your one large oreo shake has 2600 calories, no wonder your obesity rate is 35% and isn't slowing. Driving to the toilet instead of walking also doesn't help. Then your hospitals get overrun with preventable diseases and healthcare gets expensive. This isn't a 'caring' problem when getting fat is the only option for most people, the way most people life is specifically designed to make you obese.

My hypothesis is most heart attacks and cancer are also caused by transmissible diseases, but ones which are mostly symptomless.

We already know the link between cervical cancer and HPV, various cancers are caused by EBV, hepatitis virus often causes liver cancer, herpes virus also causes some cancers.

Plenty of viruses are also linked to a substantially increased risk of heart disease, including the common cold.

I suspect that nearly all cancers are caused by viruses, and are often just viruses that have no other symptoms and might take decades to cause the cancer. If we can stop the transmission of those viruses, cancer rates will eventually drop.

The challenge is how to do that smartly - not having half the population sitting at home twiddling their thumbs because they have some symptomless virus and 'feel fine'.

Is this hyperbole or do Americans actually drive rather than walk to toilets? Not being hostile, genuinely curious.

A little hyperbole, but as an American, the idea that the average person in my country would rather drive somewhere rather than feel inconvenienced by a short walk is very accurate.