@hemlockecho
Father, cat dad, optimist, software developer, reader, writer, musician, travel fiend, pickle hater. (He/him) Interests: travel, politics, archeology, history, literature, travel writing, creative nonfiction, cheesecake, climate change, technology, YIMBY
The draw of a conspiracy theory hinges on the fact that your opinion on it doesn't generally matter. Once it DOES matter, conspiracies become a much costlier indulgence. E.g. young people were more likely to believe COVID vax conspiracies than were older people, which reflects their risk profiles.
That is 2 years old. If you look at the most recent dataset, you see the COVID drop is already reversing. In this years data, I'm sure you'll see another rise. In any event, "there was a slight dip in life expectancy due to a pandemic" is not an argument that the past was better than the present.
Median personal income is down less than 1% after a decade in which it rose 25%. I don't think that really makes the "we aren't better off" argument very well.
Life expectancy is not going down, it's going up. It's higher than at any point in the past and continues to rise. The oft quoted stat on the brief expectancy drop is the "cohort life expectancy" stat, which isn't what most ppl think of as life expectancy. More here: www.crfb.org/blogs/life-e...
