© Win McNamee via Getty ImagesDr. Robert Califf, Commissioner of the FDA
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf recently took to X to mourn the "
catastrophic" decline in U.S. life expectancy.
But his post, which hit on smoking, diet, chronic illness and health care, ignored the obvious:
People are dying in abnormally high numbers even now and long since COVID waned. Yet public health agencies and medical societies are silent.Life insurers have been consistently sounding the alarm over these unexpected or, "excess," deaths, which claimed 158,000more Americans in the first nine months of 2023 than in the same period in 2019. That exceeds America's combined losses from every war since Vietnam. Congress should urgently work with insurance experts to investigate this troubling trend.
With the worst of COVID behind us, annual deaths for all causes should be back to pre-pandemic levels — or even lower because of the loss of so many sick and infirm Americans. Instead, the death toll remains "
alarming," "
disturbing," and deserving of "
urgent attention," according to insurance industry articles.
Actuarial reports — used by insurers to inform decisions — show deaths occurring disproportionately among
young working-age people. Nonetheless, America's chief health manager, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opted in September to archive its excess deaths
webpage with a note stating, "these datasets will no longer be updated."
Comment: There were plenty of studies shouting the truth early on. The major medical journals and the media chose (were instructed?) to ignore and/or ridicule the notion: