Mr. 1000, reminds me a bit of some modern day people deriding the Middle Ages as a time of dirt and poor health, as if it was somehow optional and the silly peasants simply refused to use vacuum cleaners and antibiotics.
And apparently, you couldn't get a Polish au pair for love nor money.
I do wonder what we've really gained from all that extra expenditure.
Improvements in health and longevity during the last 70 years have more to do with lifestyle and work changes eg a massive reduction in smoking and millions fewer working in health destroying jobs.
Not really. Just before the start of WWII, life expectancy was in the 40's, infant mortality was nontrivial, the disabled were bedbound, housebound or dead. The immunisation programs of the 50's hugely reduced child mortality, better antenatal and postnatal care stopped infant mortality in its tracks. People didn't stop smoking by themselves but via public health programs that took decades to reach fruition. Epidemiology and disease tracking monitor disease outbreak and tries to make resources available to meet them. Diptheria and polio are strangers, not companions. Iron lungs are in museums. HIV is a manageable condition, not a death sentence. We are so healthy that diseases such as diabetes or senility or even cancer concern us, where in previous years you would simply have died of something else first. Our life expectancy is in the seventies. We forget how profoundly life has changed since WWII due to medicine and surgery.
Try google before you get your facts wrong and demolish your whole argument.
I do wonder what we've really gained from all that extra expenditure.
Improvements in health and longevity during the last 70 years have more to do with lifestyle and work changes eg a massive reduction in smoking and millions fewer working in health destroying jobs.
Not really. Just before the start of WWII, life expectancy was in the 40's, infant mortality was nontrivial, the disabled were bedbound, housebound or dead. The immunisation programs of the 50's hugely reduced child mortality, better antenatal and postnatal care stopped infant mortality in its tracks. People didn't stop smoking by themselves but via public health programs that took decades to reach fruition. Epidemiology and disease tracking monitor disease outbreak and tries to make resources available to meet them. Diptheria and polio are strangers, not companions. Iron lungs are in museums. HIV is a manageable condition, not a death sentence. We are so healthy that diseases such as diabetes or senility or even cancer concern us, where in previous years you would simply have died of something else first. Our life expectancy is in the seventies. We forget how profoundly life has changed since WWII due to medicine and surgery.
Try google before you get your facts wrong and demolish your whole argument.
It should be noted that life expectancy increased by more in years, and far more proportionally, between 1891 and 1951 than it has done since 1951.
Perhaps a little brusque in retrospect but I think that data shows that the most useful increases in life expectancy occurred decades ago.
If ever increasing expenditure on health and social care is merely brining a few months of low quality life at very old age is it the most useful application of resources ?
Or would people prefer to have more money and time in their 20s and 30s or indeed 60s ** and 70s.
** In my experience its people in their 60s who spend a lot of time looking after the lingering sick oldies.
Comments
Life expectancy in England and Wales:
1931
Male 58.7
Female 62.9
1951
Male 66.4
Female 71.5
https://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-has-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/
It should be noted that life expectancy increased by more in years, and far more proportionally, between 1891 and 1951 than it has done since 1951.
If ever increasing expenditure on health and social care is merely brining a few months of low quality life at very old age is it the most useful application of resources ?
Or would people prefer to have more money and time in their 20s and 30s or indeed 60s ** and 70s.
** In my experience its people in their 60s who spend a lot of time looking after the lingering sick oldies.