Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

 Just returned from a vacation to visit my 7 months old grandson.  It was a lot of fun to see and play with him.  But back to reality.  I just saw this article in CNN where the life expectancy of the U.S. has declined by more than two and a half years since the pandemic started.   To put into perspective, a change of a few tenths in a year is very unusual.  The current life expectancy of Americans stand at 76 years, the lowest since 1996.

Half of the decline is due to COVID.  The second largest cause of the decline in drugs.  The sad thing is that both of these causes could have been mitigated.  They are both unforce errors by us and the leaders of our government.  While American Indians had the worst decline among all ethnic groups, no group is spared.  Whites, for example, had the least decline in 2020 but had the second highest decline in 2021, worse than Blacks and Hispanics.  I think this is because Whites had the best health care and got in line first for the vaccines so they did better in the beginning.  But in the past year, Whites are among the worst of the anti-vaxxers.  They are also the most likely to call for freedom of not wearing masks in crowded public places and opening up of everything.  Advantages forfeited.

I have always said that the first freedom, in my opinion, is the freedom to be alive.  No freedom if you are six feet under.  Asian Americans did the best among the ethnic groups in these past two years.  I think many Asian Americans came from countries where individual freedom is not as important as the well being of the whole society.  I think if you live in Idaho or Wyoming, it may not make much difference what you do.  But if you live in crowded places like LA or NY, I think there is a responsibility to make it safer for each other.  I won't waste my breath here ranting about the ineptitude of our government in the pandemic, opioid crisis and mass gun shootings.  Too many unforced errors to talk about!