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Dr. James H. Gundlach

@pecanjim.bsky.social

Retired Sociology/Demography professor. I know the United States has an awfully high middle aged death rate. My goal is to explain it well enough to get people to fix it.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · yesterday

A web search for "Hearing a lie repeated" provides many links as to why Trump keeps repeating his lies. The simple fact is human come to believe a repeated lie. How often have you heard him say his goons invading the capital after his failure to win have been unfairly locked up? 🧪 #Republican

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3d ago

A note on how I read science postings is I decide if I find it interesting and if I do, I click recommend. I find that engaging in that judgement process makes me have more interest in what I read and remember more of them. ☠️🧪

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 4d ago

This graph shows the non-Hispanic white age group 20-64 deaths per 100,000 in Democrat and Republican voting states as a percent of the same age group in mixed-party states ☠️ #Sociology #Population #politicalscience

In earlier graphs I produced, I made them too complex to make the main point I want to show with the data, that among the middle aged politics have a very major effect on death rates. Democrats have the lowest, mixed party next and Republicans the highest. This graph focuses on the death rates of non-Hispanic whites rather than the total population because party effects are so substantial and if Republican voters knew that their votes were killing them earlier, they might vote otherwise. And the main thing they show is that voting Republican is a major cause of our high middle aged death rates which is a major cause of the fact that the United States ranks 60th from the top of the list of countries ranked by life expectancy. And that is this shows that our paying the most of all the countries for health care we are not getting our money's worth.

Here are the states in each group:
Dem Mix Rep
CA AZ AL
CO GA AK
CT IA AR
DE MI FL
DC MN ID
HI NH IN
IL NC KS
ME OH KY
MD PA LA
MA TX MS
NV WI MO
NJ MT
NM NE
NY ND
OR OK
RI SC
VT SD
VA TN
WA UT
WV
WY
And here is something for data hounds, the dot making numbers:
Year Dem Rep
1999 98 117
2000 97 118
2001 100 118
2002 98 119
2003 98 121
2004 98 120
2005 95 119
2006 96 120
2007 95 119
2008 94 120
2009 93 120
2010 92 121
2011 91 119
2012 91 120
2013 90 119
2014 90 120
2015 88 119
2016 87 118
2017 86 117
2018 87 119
2019 87 119
2020 88 120
2021 82 123
2022 86 120
2023 88 120
2024 86 119

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 5d ago

The 2024 age grouped data is finally available for all the states so I can finally provide this graph that shows the comparison of single year age death rates for states grouped by which party they vote for. My main point is party differences are important.🧪☠️ #Sociology #population #politics

If you have been following my post for a while you have seen this graph for earlier years. This graph is very much like the earlier years. I can not find a comparison of death rates for states grouped by party they vote for anywhere else. Out of these 170 dots only one, six year olds in Mixed Party states, shows a lower death rate than the same age group in Democratic voting states. I also notice that the six year olds in non-Democrat voting states average close to the same as Democrat voting states. My guess is it has something to do with starting school, but it that is just a guess. The main thing I see here is we now have a data point showing a non-elderly single year age death rate among the mixed party states than the Democrat voting staters.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · last wk.

Here are three graphs showing death rates for people in states grouped by party the state votes for in the United States by year from 1999 through 2024 by age groups 0-19, 20-64 and 65+. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Canada

Here are the death rates of the age 0-19 total United States Population divided by party the state votes for. The states in each group are listed below.

There are three major patterns I see in this graph. The first is declining death rate. Second the decline is very similar for all three groups. One difference is the Mixed Party group does not have as much a general decline as the other two and the line for the Democrat voting states declines a little more than the other two.

The other major thing the graph displays is as substantial and sharper decline in all three death rates from 2007 to 2014. I think this may be the effect of getting states to provide health care for the uninsured young but I just cannot find the dates for when this happened to be sure.

Anyway, here are the states in each political groups of states:

Democrats Mixed Republican
CA AZ AL
CO GA AK
CT IA AR
DE MI FL
DC MN ID
HI NH IN
IL NC KS
ME OH KY
MD PA LA
MA TX MS
NV WI MO
NJ MI MT
NM NE
NY ND
OR OK
RI SC
VT SD
VA TN
WA UT
WV
WY

Here is the very different looking graph that happens to be exactly the same graph as the first one except it is for ages 20 through 64, the population whose health care is dominated by capitalist health insurance. The middle aged people in the Democratic voting states show a very steady death rate until COVID hits producing sharp but limited to three years, 2019 through 2021, abnormally high death rates. But, this is different that what has happened in the rest of the economically developed part of earth. All the other economically developed parts of this planet had steady declining death rates during the years without COVID. The Democrat voting states generally stayed between 300 and 310 deaths per 100,000 while the Mixed Party states went up from 332 to 385 deaths per 100,000 at the same time while the Republican voting states took that death rate up to 439 in 2024 from 378 in 1999.

The major thing I see is the relative position of the party voting states were the same for the middle aged as they were for the young. The big difference the young death rates were going down while the best the middle aged did was among the Democrat voting states and worst among the Republican voting states.

And looking at the COVID years, the Democrat voting states showed the smallest increase while the mixed party showed some more than them and the Republican voting states showed the largest increase.

The political party groups of the age 65+ age group has the most consistent rate of declining death rates until COVID hit. The major difference here is the Republican voting states had consistently lower death rates until COVID hit. I think the shift in position with COVID is due to Southern Baptist making up a large portion of the Republican voting states and they are reluctant to get vaccinated. I have no data to explain why prior to COVID the mixed party states were higher than the Republican voting states. I only hypothesize that here the survival of the fittest might be produced by the highest death rates in the Republican voting states during the younger ages.

The stronger increase during the COVID years among the elderly simply produced by COVID being more deadly among the elderly. And all three graphs show COVID deaths higher among Republicans.

As a unrelated comment notes that I have not posted for a while. It was primary because I was away from home and my desktop computer while I joined my wife at a gathering of her with her three sibling at a rented vacation home up on the northern edge of Washington state. Our vacation house had a view to the north that had a large stretch of water with Canada visible as a narrow stretch of land. We spent one day on a visit to a very large botanical garden up a ways in Canada. A drive to see the Pacific ocean did not take long. But it was quite far from our home near Tuskegee Alabama.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3w ago

Here I take an unusual approach to looking at religion and state life expectancy. The measure of religion I use here is the percent non-religious. See text for more detail.🧪☠️ #Sociolgy #Population #Religion

Let's first get the regression statistics predicting life expectancy plus the predicted life expectancy for the hypothetical state with 100% non-religious people.

r 0.53
b 0.18
a 72.64
y' x=100 91.03

This graph clearly shows that where the percent of a state that is non--religious the life expectancy is longer. In other words the more religious a state the higher the death rate. But the mere fact of a correlation does not tell us which variable causes the other. I entered the variables into the regression equation where percent without religion was the independent variable but I really don't know which variable is a cause and and which is an effect. In fact there could be another variable or variables not included here that cause or causes both.

Here are my general thoughts after close to six decades of working and playing with mortality data:

Early deaths are a major source of religious beliefs that promote a future of souls after death. I even think Southern Baptist and some other fundamentalist religions use prayer for health care to increase death rates to increase church attendance. In looking at the death rates under age 1, The correlation between state percent Southern Baptist and age 0 death rate is 0.74. Using regression results between state percent Southern Baptist and age 0 death rates, I estimate the 2024 death rate for non-Southern Baptist is 461 per 100,00 and for Southern Baptist it is 1010 per 100,000.

Here is a link to a solid examination of views on health care and ending life:
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/11/21/views-on-end-of-life-medical-treatments/

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 4w ago

Percent change in death rates from 1999 to 2024 for age groups defined by their health care is paid for.🧪☠️ #Sociology #Population #Healthinsurance

The key here is that the age group dominated by capitalist health insurance is the one showing an increase in death rates. Both young age groups are primarily paid for by capitalist health insurance but the young have almost universal state funded health care for the elderly. The aged 20-64 is dominated by capitalist health insurance and it is the only one showing an increase in death rates from 1999 to 2024. The elderly in covered by Medicare and capitalist health insurance funded clones. Unfortunately I have not been able to separate mortality data for the elderly by which of the two elderly health insurance systems fund care. But to a large degree the elderly capitalist funded Medicaid follows Medicaid procedures. But there is increasing evidence that the Capitalist version is increasingly denying care.

In general I think the graph shows that providing universal coverage produces a death rate that is about 30% lower than capitalist health insurance.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · last mo.

In the past month I reached the point of being a third as old and the United States, I only figured it out today because it focuses on how old the United States is. I celebrate by wearing my University of Texas Population center T-shirt I earned with a PHd🧪☠️ #Sociology #Population #Demography

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · last mo.

Trump considers voting by mail cheating because he considers voting Democrat cheating. 🧪☠️ #Sociology #Population #Politics #Republiocan

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · last mo.

I was scanning through TV channels this morning and realized that most of the channels that have "NEWS" in their name are now lying when they use that name.🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #TV #Population #Fun

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · last mo.

Earlier I posted a map like this one with how our states ranked in a table with all countries and states. The nation data I used to produce that graphic map was produced by the CIA which deleted the data. This is an update. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Demography

The country data used to producing these rankings that shows where our stater are within the range3 of country and states put together and ranked by life expectancy: The country data is from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

And the state data is from wonder.cdc.gov, it takes some learning how to get the data you want from this link: Underlying Cause of Death at this data set.

The highest ranked state, the state with the longest life expectancy, is Hawaii which shares the 58th and 59th live expectancy with the Czech Republic with a life expectancy, the age by which half the people die, of 80. The lowest ranked is West Virginia, with a life expectancy of 72.2 which is tied in ranking with India. And the lack of a complete number on the map is just another mistake I made and I don't have time now to go remake the map. Anyway, here is a table of states by life expectancy so you can see what got each state ranked where they are:

ST Life Expectancy
AL 73.8
AK 75.8
AZ 76.7
AR 73.9
CA 79.3
CO 78.5
CT 79.4
DE 76.5
DC 76.6
FL 77.9
GA 75.9
HI 80
ID 78.4
IL 77.5
IN 75.4
IA 77.9
KS 76.5
KY 73.6
LA 73.8
ME 76.6
MD 77.8
MA 79.8
MI 76.8
MN 79.3
MS 72.6
MO 75.2
MT 77.3
NE 78.3
NV 76.4
NH 78.7
NJ 79.6
NM 74.5
NY 79.5
NC 75.9
ND 77.9
OH 75.6
OK 73.8
OR 77.7
PA 77.3
RI 79.2
SC 75.1
SD 77.3
TN 73.8
TX 77.1
UT 79
VT 78.3
VA 77.5
WA 78.4
WV 72.2
WI 78.1
WY 76.8

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Here single year aged data for states grouped by party in 2024 are shown as total United States single year age death rates in 1999. See text for more detail. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Demography #Mortality

Some of my earlier post have shown similar patterns in death rates by age and party. This one is different in that it looks at the changes in death rates from 1999 to 2024. Why do I start with 1999? There are two reasons: The first is that is the year that the Bureau of Vital Statistics adopted the current format for available data on line. The second is that this is very close to when the current patterns in our death rates started.

The major part of this graph that shows how the United States death rates are different from the patterns found in all the other economically developed countries is the increasing death rates over time for ages 16 through around age 30. This unique pattern is caused by how paying for health care changes as we enter adult hood. This is moving from capitalist health insurance with holes covered by state coverage of most of the uninsured young to health care payment being dominated by capitalist health insurance for the middle aged.

If the United States showed changes in death rates by age that are shown in the rest of the economically developed part of earth there would not be desperate lines for state equivalent parts of countries. And the line would be very close to a strait line running from where are youngest Democratic voting states were in 2024 to where the age 70+ dots were in 2024.

To get a easy number to compare to present here I have calculated comparable Canada and United States death rates for populations aged 0-84 I calculated the average of the United States death rates as a percent of the same Canada deaths areas for 2024 and got 180%.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Why are the workers that are supposed to be removing Trump's name from the library building the scaffolding higher than needed? I think something is up.🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Trump

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Here i display the percent change in single year age, age 0-84 and the age group 85+ death rates by party the state generally voted for from 1999-2019. See text for more information. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Politics #Population #Demography #Deaths

I ended the. time covered b y this graph with 2019 data because COVID makes the later data less comparable over time. The main thing the graph shows the effect of how we pay for health care on death rates. The United States is unique in having a mixed way of paying for health care and this graph shows that the way we choose to pay for health care has a major effect on death rates. The young are primary covered covered by capitalist health insurance with most of the young who are not covered by that insurance able to get backed up health care through states paying for it. While the young dots bounce around a lot, they average about a 30% decline in their death rate. Then comes all three lines of dots moving from that healthy decline of about 40% at age 16 to a unique on earth 30% to 40% increase at age 30. This unique, I consider it evil, increase in death rates is caused by the unique move to almost pure capitalist system of paying for health care in the United States. At the end of this peak in the increasing death rates, political party in power in states begins to show differences in death rate trends.People in Democrat voting states show the lowest dots for the remaining age groups displayed while Republican voting state show the highest and except for age group 85+ when the mixed party group moves to the top. The age by which the parties move to consistently decline also differ. The last Democrat increase is age 38, the same for Mixed Parties is age 41 but the Republican voting states have increasing single year age groups, off and on, up to age 58.

While the United States shows late middle age declining death rates they really don't reach the level of declines seen in the rest the economically developed countries until age 72. If the United States death rates were like the rest of the economically develo0pted world, the middle age dots would fit in a relatively strait line between age 16 and 72.

Here I will do two things, first discuss the above graph and second, post a list of states by party group used in graphs on both pages.

The age group limitation is Canada reports data. for age group 85-89,9 0-94, 95+ while the United States reports data for the age group 85+ and I haven't figured out how to produce comparable data for the oldest age groups.

I will simply say Canadians have much lower death rates. than we do and even our Democrat voting states have a death rate more than 30% higher in the middle aged. Also in the two last years of cost of health care per person has gone from a little over half of the Unite States to a little less than half of the United states while moving from a life expectancy 3.2 years longer to 3.3 years longer. Another way of looking at it, the UN ranks the Canada 20th from the longest life expectancy while paying twice as much for health care the United States ranks 55th.

Here is the state groupings:
Dem Mix Rep
CA AZ AL
CO GA AK
CT IA AR
DE MI FL
DC MN ID
HI NH IN
IL NC KS
ME OH KY
MD PA LA
MA TX MS
NV WI MO
NJ MT
NM NE
NY ND
OR OK
RI SC
VT SD
VA TN
WA UT
WV
WY

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Here I update a previous graph by adding the 2024 data which is interesting, see discussion for why I say that. The state politics effect on middle aged death rates showed a steadily increasing political effect up to 2018,.🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Political #Demography #Population

From 1999 through 2017 the non-Democratic party effects steadily increased a little more among Republican voting states than among mixed party voting states. Then for the two years before COVID that long trend reversed. Then, during the first year of COVID, the year before vaccine, the Democrat voting states clearly showed being hit harder than the other states. This is primary due to the coast areas, where COVID hit first, being hit harder by COVID during this year and the Democrats being substantially over represented in coastal areas. In general I find this pronounced COVID effect to be due to the coastal areas being hit by COVID during this first year being caused by early lack of knowledge about how to fight it and the lack of a vaccine that became available close to the time between the first and second year. The other thing that is operating is the slower adoption of vaccination by the conservative Christians. I hypothesize that there was an increased adoption of vaccination when the vaccine rejectors saw a close unvaccinated person die from COVID.

But, I think the important thing the last dot shows is the 1999 through 2017 trend is back!

Here are the states in each politcal group:
Dem Mix Rep
CA AZ AL
CO GA AK
CT IA AR
DE MI FL
DC MN ID
HI NH IN
IL NC KS
ME OH KY
MD PA LA
MA TX MS
NV WI MO
NJ MT
NM NE
NY ND
OR OK
RI SC
VT SD
VA TN
WA UT
WV
WY

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Showing a new measure, based on the on line Yellow Pages, of the level of Southern Baptism in the United States. Go ahead and look at all these graphs. The first is borrowed, the other three I made. 🧪☠️ #Sociology #Population #Demography #SouthernBatist

This is a very good graph showing the national data on the size of the Souther Baptist population in the United Staters. What I am doing here is showing the basis of my hypothesis of the cause of the decline in Southern Baptism:The high Southern Baptist infant mortality rate is causing them to lose members.

Some background Southern Baptist gained the ability to use church based health care as a side note in Obama Care. My guess is that the Southern Baptist gained this by offering the final additional votes to pass it to president Obama. As the Baptist church offers both health insurance and hospitals they can effectively promote the cheapest health care: PRAYER! it is also ineffective, see graphs 2 through 4 for what I am presenting here.

The second one shows the relationship between the available measure of state level of Southern Population and state infant mortality rates. The third one shows the relationship between the number of Southern Baptist churches listed in the current on-line version of the Yellow Pages for each state per state population divided by 100,000. This is my new measure of the level of Southern Baptism in each state. The final one shows the relationship between this new measure of Southern Baptism and age 20-64 death rates in 2024.

Here the scatterplot displays the state percent Southern Baptist by the state total age 0 death rates. The first thing to notice is how many of the states are clustered in the low percent Southern Baptist at the bottom of the graph. Here are the regression results:
r = 0.60046
b = 8.14
a = 520.94
I am sure you noticed I posted the r with five numbers after the decimal, more on that in the text with the next graph.

Here is the scatterplot with the measure I got using the on-line Yellow Pages search for Southern Baptist for each state. I first used Southern Baptist Church but that caused the Yellow Pages to count the none southern Baptist Churches as well. I then calculated the number of Southern Baptist churches per 100,000 for all 50 states, Hawaii did not have any so I excluded from both analyses it in part because Hawaii is such an outlier in so many ways I often find excluding it and DC lead to cleaner statistical analyses. Anyway here are the regression results:

r = 0.69841
b = 5.25
a = 473.17

Notice how if I had done the traditional rounding the r's would have been 0.60 and 0.70. When I read them written that way I would have become suspicious of the honesty of what I was reading. I assumed most of my readers here were as inclined to be cautious readers as I am so I posted all 5 digits after the decimal the stat program printed.

As I compared these two scatter plots the less collapsed the lower values are in this graph led me to conclude this is a more reasonable distribution of the size of the states's Southern Baptist populations. It is also easier the attach two letter labels to the dots. But the difference between rounded r's of 0.60 and 0.70 are important.

What I regret about using it is estimating the death rates for the hypothetical 100% population is not possible, at least I haven't figured out how to do it.

Next I will use these measures of the state Southern Baptist population to look at the state age 20 through 64 age groups. I will present the scatter plot for the Yellow Pages measure but present the statistics for both measures in the text for the last graph I can display in this posting.

First note: I could not get the graphing program to accept a vertical label of SB churches or a horizontal label of deaths per 100,000.

This scatterplot shows the 2024 age 20-24 deaths per 100,000 for states by number of Southern Baptist churches per 100,000. Here are the regression statistics on the left are the ones for this data, on the right the same statistics for the published 2020 data:

Yellow Pages. Survey Data
r = 0.82 r = 0.65
b = 3.73 b = 5.35
a = 302.10 a = 339.18

The r's are the only statistics that can be compared because the two independent variables are different.

Now my brain injury keeps me from doing what I should. Since I can't remember what I just wrote in the earlier pages, I don't know if I led you to expect something I can't remember to do. I guess that deserves a note on my brain problem.

Back close to my 66th birthday I suffered an encephalitis infection of my brain. When I came to, I could not recall the words to put a sentence together and after everyone left the hospital I counted the words going through the alphabet, aa, ab, ac...zz, and could think of 196 words. I first decided to commit suicide but then it occurred to me that if I could count the words, my brain wasn't completely dead. Anyway, my brain is still limited in ways I don't completely. understand. I am just going to post this and see how it does.

To end, I think using the online phone book search is a handy way to measure some things. It clearly worked here.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Alabama is the state with the 47th highest life expectancy out of 50. Life expectancy is crudely the age by which half the people die. And the United States ranks 63 among countries in the world. And we pay the most for health care.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3mo ago

The United States pays just a little over twice as much for health care as Canada and Canadian's life expectancy is 3.33 years longer than the ours. I am a resident and citizen of the United States. 🧪☠️👍 #Sociology #Population #Something #Good #Bad

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3mo ago

In the United States we have a mixed system of paying for health care, the text with these two graphs points to our problem area and suggests cures.🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #interesting

This graph displays 171 percentages showing young, 0-19, middle aged, 20-64, and elderly, 65+, age groups death rates as a percent of their 1968 death rates. In general the time covered by this graph should have death rates reflecting a very constant increase in health care's ability to keep people alive longer, by showing consistently declining death rates, the COVID epidemic is an exception. The bottom line of blue diamond dots shows an almost constant declining young death rate. The period of minimal decline, about 2000-2010 was ended by the almost universal adoption of states starting to pay for the uninsured young people's health care.

There are two very bad parts of these lines. The first is for the elderly from 1977 to 2000.Here we have almost a quarter of century where our elderly ended the period with almost exactly the same death rate as they started it with, It ended with declining death rates after Medicare picked up paying for a major cost of modern health care, prescriptions.

The changing death rates that out does this bad elderly data is the age 20-64 death rates consistently increasing from 1998 until COVID hit in 2020. One problem I see in the data is the reported COVID deaths are a much smaller number than the increases we see in the COVID years.

I think the major cause of the recent non-COVID increases in the middle aged death rates is the health insurance industry denying care since they moved to requiring prior approval of care. Unfortunately I cannot find any data that allows me to measure that denial of care in a way I can statistically relate it to total death rates by age group.

To summarize this trend I present a simple char showing Canada's 2023 age group deaths rates as a percent of the comparable United States death rates.

If you remember that the young and old showed more declining death rates toward the end of the time covered in the first graph, you might remember that it showed the middle aged death rates in the United States were the highest in 2023. In general when I look at this graph I see we are at about 80% of Canada's death rate among our youngest. Moving to the middle aged takes Canada down to about 60% of the United States and as we move up to the elderly they end up doing a little better than our young.
Now, I ask if we get our money's worth. We spend $14,775 per year in the United States versus $7,301 in Canada. If I double Canada's spending I get $14,602.

Comparing how much we spend with how our death rates compare to Canada's, You can find the $ data at:

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org

Feel free to copy these charts as well as this text and pass it on.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3mo ago

In the United States we have a mixed system of paying for health care, the text with these two graphs points to our problem area and suggests cures.🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #interesting

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Here you can see the difference between the death single year age death rates in Democrat voting states from Mixed Party, Republican Voting and Alabama for three years, 2022 through 2023. See text for more info. 🧪☠️ #Sociology #Population #Democracy

See that dot toward the top and close to the left of the graph, The six year-olds in Alabama have a death rate for these three years that had a death rate 136% as high as the same measure in Democrat voting states. The clear pattern in the mixed party voting states, Republican voting states and Alabama is Democrat voting states have lower deaths rates, the only different one is for people aged 85+ in Republican voting states which is 2% lower. Alabama clearly has higher death rtes.

I have used data for three years rather than the usual one year to add stability to the dots for the younger years. Small numbers of populations show the same increased variation that causes demographers to prefer larger numbers in their samples. l used three years of data to increase stability but even that does not produce enough cases ion the younger single year age groups to produce stable lines at the younger ages. Anyway you should be able to see that Alabama has the highest death rates shown followed by Republican voting states followed by mixed party voting states (the states in each group are shown below).

democratic mixed party Republican
06 (California) 04 (Arizona) 01 (Alabama)
08 (Colorado) 13 (Georgia) 02 (Alaska)
09 (Connecticut) 9 (Iowa) 05 Arkansas
10 (Delaware) 26 (Michigan) 12 (Florida)
11 (DC) 27 (Minnesota) 16 (Idaho)
15 (Hawaii) 33 (New Hamp) 18 (Indiana)
17 (Illinois) 37 (North Carolina)20 (Kansas)
23 (Maine) 39 (Ohio) 21 (Kentucky)
24 (Maryland) 42 (Pennsylvania) 22 (Louisiana)
25 (Ma)55 (Wisconsin) 28 (Mississippi)
32 (Nevada) 29 (Missouri)
34 (New Jersey) 30 (Montana)
35 (New Mexico) 31 (Nebraska)
36 (New York) 38 (North Dakota)
41 (Oregon) 40 (Oklahoma)
44 (Rhode Island) 45 (South Carolina)
50 (VT) 46 ( SD)
47 (Tennessee)
49 (UT)
54 (WV)
56 (WY)

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Here is a map displaying a more accurate total COVID death rates for each of the states. I don't have time to do as much as I should with this but the discussion under the graph will show you more. I can't complete the discussion now. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #population #Politics #Demography

The Bureau of Vital Statistics has a data access system that allows access to a second cause of death that is reported for a fairly large portion of the population. I just discovered that I can access the death certificates that will allow me to count the total number of deaths that list COVID at the first and second cause of death. I have produce the data that allows me to calculate a total number of deaths.

Some of you may question the cases where COVID is entered as the second cause of death on death certificates. What is happening is that the doctors filling out the death certificate based form. Basically listing COVID as the second cause of death means COVID caused the cause listed as the first cause. If I could find data on the third or larger numbered cause, I would add them the number of COVID deaths that. Actually, thinking about this has added looking at all the post COVID causes need to be worked with.

Here are the COVID data I show total numbers for the years we have current data for:
Group N of deaths
Normal COVID 1,035,634
Added as 2nd 180,925
Total COVID 1,216,559

I should do more with this but I need to go to bed and get up early for a doctor's visit tomorrow.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I generally look at every variable I find that I think might be related to death rates, today it is states ranked by quality of work of nurses. See text for more information. 🧪 💡 ☠️ #Sociology #Deaths #Healthcare

This morning I ran across a measure of the quality of nurses' work life here:

https://wallethub.com/edu/best-states-for-nurses/4041

Since my mother was a nurse I am concerned about how nurses are treated and when I ran across this measure I decided to look at the effect of quality of our nurses work and the middle age death rates. I am looking at the middle aged death rates because they clearly are the ones in the United States who receive the worst health care. Actually that comparison is for the all the economically developed countries.

For all states the regression statistics are:
r=0.63
b=3.6
a=285.1
With South Carolina, that lonely little dot up near the middle of the top of the graph, an outlier, the regression statistics are:
r=0.70
b= 3.7
a=277.5

In general the exclusion of outlying South Carolina, which I have found to have the constantly higher than predicted death rate, increases r from 0.63 to 0.70.

Anyway, this suggests increasing the quality of work life is too important to be cut as a means to reduce the cost of health care.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3mo ago

This graph updates similar graphs I have presented earlier with our mortality data for 2024, the latest year data available. In general it still looks very much like earlier graphs. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #demography #Political

The Republican voting states still have the highest death rates. In fact they look just as much higher as they were in this kind of graph I produced with earlier years of data. The mixed party is still close to 100% most of the way across. And the Democratic voting states are well below and it takes moving onto our most socialist health care for the mixed party and
Republican voting states to come together as the oldest ages. The big change in this graph is the the Democratic voting states stay much lower in this latest data than they did earlier.

Comparing the Republican voting states death rates with the Democratic voting states: The Republican voting states had 927,403 deaths in 2024 and if the had experienced the Democratic states deaths rates they would have had 174,586 fewer or 18.8 percent.

The mixed party states had 792,233 and If they had experienced the Democrat voting states rate they would have saved 121,307 lives, that 15.3 percent.

Here are the states by my grouping into party voting:

DemMix Rep
CA AZ AL
CO GA AK
CT IA AR
DE MI FL
DC MN ID
HI NH IN
IL NC KS
ME OH KY
MD PA LA
MA TX MS
NV WI MO
NJ MT
NM NE
NY ND
OR OK
RI SC
VT SD
VA TN
WA UT
WV
WY

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Here I compare what the United States and a few peer countries pay for health care in dollars and what they get out of it in years of living that produce half of the countries deaths. Also known as life expectancy. See text for details. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #mortality #population

This is another attempt to show that the United States is not getting its money's worth out of our health care system. Counties that spend much less on health care than we do while they are living much longer.

In the past I have posted a graph that showed how single year age death rates from 1999 through 2024 correlated with year. In general it showed the young, who primarily have capitalist health insurance but almost all of the states have state funded care for the uninsured young had weak correlations showing fair declining death rates. For the middle aged those correlations shifter to positive as they age increased to peaking at about 0.97 at age 30 and did not shift to consistently negative until Medicare with the capitalist clone, Medicaid, kicked in. From age 65 to 84 and 85+the correlations showed constant declining death rates. Anyway, our poor position on this graph is due to the way capitalist provide health care for the ages they control access to health care.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Here is a look at age 20-64 death rates by party the state votes for. It might be better to think of these groups as high, medium, and low in Democrat party power. 🧪💡☠️

The measured COVID deaths are removed. Part of the problem removing COVID deaths is that many of the deaths of COVID infected people are labeled caused by a stronger cause of death that infects the victim that has been exacerbated by the COVID infection.

This graph focuses on the middle aged because this age group includes all but the very old who have had the most pronounced increases in death rates in the United States.

The major thing this graph shows that the group of Democrat voting group of states here here have substantially lower death rates, followed by mixed party and topped off by the Republican voting states.

While the graphs show the deaths per 100,000 experienced by the three groups of states by year, here are the numbers of actual, number and percent more than at Democrats:

In Republican voting states:
Number: 1,680,717
Number over Democrats rate: 494,701
Percent over Democrats number: 29.4%

In Mixed party states: 1,349,378
Number over Democrat rate: 255,995
Percent over Democrats number: 19.0%

My thoughts: The 255,995 plus 494,701 party total excess is 750,696 middle aged deaths in the United States from 2018 through 2024. In WWII we experienced 407,300 combat deaths. During these few years, our deaths in the Republican and mixed party voting states had almost twice as many more deaths than they would have had at the Democratic voting states deaths yearly death rates.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Here is another quick and dirty graph pointing out that Trump is lying again. He said this this morning and I was irresponsible and watched an hour of TV before getting around to posting this. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Politics #Trump and I wonder where else I could # it.

The reason I put this together was I wanted to point out that Democrat voting states had lower death rates than mixed party states who had lower death rates than Republican voting states. See, this is just another Trump lie.

But as I looked at it there seems to be increases during Trump's time and declining death rates in all three political groups of states during Biden's term if you recognize that it takes at least a year for politics to put things in place that can reduce death rates. And, Biden did do several things to reduce death rates, one that I have found is limit private health insurance's right to deny care to people who have kept paying for it. And these changes are much larger than the COVID effect. I started to remove COVID deaths but Trump can best be described as pro-COVID while Biden was clearly anti-COVID.

Well enough said for a quick post.

I wish we had faster production of mortality data. I would like to daily tabulations that saved for every day and added to an ongoing tabulation for the current year that are less than a month old. I know it is possible, it would take more people and money. My subconscious just said "Dream on Jim."

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Here is an analogy: In Boxing Republicans have switched to brass knuckles while Democrats have kept Boxing Gloves. Democrats finally have decided that it is necessary to switch to brass knuckles to have an equal chance to win. Trump says Democrats are now cheating.🧪 #Democrats #Republicans

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Here is an attempt to get around the gun industry's ability to limit the measuring of level of gun ownership by using a widely available list of the gun stores, the online Yellow Pages. See text for more information. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Politics

Here is a simple scatter plot of the number of gun stores listed in the online version of the on line Yellow Pages about a month ago. Unlike most most data sources used in research, these change every time a new gun store opens or closes so any replication will have slightly different results. But this is a measure that the gun industry cannot lobby against producing and all that has to be done is spend about an hour running 51 searches for "firearms " with the two letter state abbreviation and scrolling down almost to the bottom of the first page to get the total number. In other searches I have found the limit of 3,000 results a problem but not with this search.

Here are the regression analysis summary statistics:
r = 0.87
b = 0.71
a = 2.23
The 2.23 is the predicted firearm suicide rate for states with no gun stores. Now the fact is, it is easy to buy a gun from another state. But that is immeasurable. Using the b of 0.71 we can estimate that a state with with 10 firearm stores per 100,000 people is predicted to have a gun suicide rate of 2.23+(10*0.71) pr 1.23+7.1 or 9.33, which is 4.18 times as high as the predicted rate for the hypothetical state with 0 stores.

Note that i report r not r squared. Here is why: The interpretation of the plain un-squared r is the percent of the sum raw errors in predicting Y form X is shown in r. When r-squared is used it is the percent of variation which is the sum of the errors squared. I find the use of r-squared by scientists is just another way science becomes more difficult for the general public to understand and it makes the relationship look weaker. A r=.50 means you can reduce your errors in predicting y by knowing x is 50%. Using the equivalent r squared = .25 means you can reduce the variation, the sum of the errors squared, by 25%. In the world I live in I can explain r to the public a lot easier than I can r squared.

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Just saw a news story where a man shot and killed six of his children and one unrelated child. They did not say anything about how the killer got his gun! 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Political