United States – Page 17 – Desdemona Despair

U. S. Black population excess age-adjusted mortality and years of potential life lost rates, 1999-2020. To assess trends over time, the relationship between each metric and study year was graphically assessed, and time was modeled as a linear spline with knots that reflected the observed inflection points from 1999 to 2019. For excess mortality rates, these inflection points were from 2007 to 2011 for males and 2015 for females. For excess rates of years of potential life lost, the knots were 2007 and 2011 for males and 2012 for females. Rates that fall above the dotted line indicate rates higher than the White population and those that fall below, rates lower than the White population. Autoregressive integrated moving average models using a 1-year correlation were implemented to account for the serial correlation of annual rates. The 2019-2020 change was estimated using a z test. Graphic: Caraballo, et al., 2023 / JAMA

May 21, 2023

Black Americans experienced 1.6 million excess deaths compared to White population over 22-year period, study finds – “It led us back to a situation where we were no better than we were 20 years ago”

By Sara Moniuszko and Danya Bacchus 16 May 2023 (CBS News) – Despite years of efforts to reduce health disparities, a new study is calling attention to the drastic differences in mortality that continue to take a toll among Black Americans. Researchers found the Black population in the United States experienced more than 1.63 million excess […]

Lifetime and current depression rates in the United States, 2015-2023. The percentage of U.S. adults who reported having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime reached 29.0 percent in 2023, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015. The percentage of Americans who had or were being treated for depression also increased, to 17.8 percent, up about seven points over the same period. Both rates were the highest recorded by Gallup since it began measuring depression using the current form of data collection in 2015. Graphic: Gallup

May 17, 2023

U.S. depression rates reach new highs in 2023

By Dan Witters 17 May 2023 WASHINGTON, D.C. (Gallup) – The percentage of U.S. adults who report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime has reached 29.0%, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015. The percentage of Americans who currently have or are being treated for depression has also increased, […]

State of press freedom worldwide 2013-2023. Changes in 180 countries and territories evaluated by RSF since 2013. In 2023, the situation was “very serious” in 31 countries, “difficult” in 42, “problematic” in 55, and “good” or “satisfactory” in 52 countries. In other words, the environment for journalism was “bad” in seven out of ten countries, and satisfactory in only three out of ten. Graphic: RSF

May 9, 2023

2023 World Press Freedom Index – Journalism threatened by fake content industry – The environment for journalism is “bad” in seven out of ten countries, satisfactory in only three out of ten

3 May 2023 (RSF) – According to the 2023 World Press Freedom Index – which evaluates the environment for journalism in 180 countries and territories and is published on World Press Freedom Day (3 May) – the situation is “very serious” in 31 countries, “difficult” in 42, “problematic” in 55, and “good” or “satisfactory” in 52 countries. In […]

National trends for social connection in the United States, 2003-2020. Social networks are getting smaller, and levels of social participation are declining distinct from whether individuals report that they are lonely. For example, objective measures of social exposure obtained from 2003-2020 find that social isolation, measured by the average time spent alone, increased from 2003 (285-minutes/day, 142.5-hours/month) to 2019 (309-minutes/day, 154.5-hours/month) and continued to increase in 2020 (333-minutes/day, 166.5-hours/month). This represents an increase of 24 hours per month spent alone. At the same time, social participation across several types of relationships has steadily declined. For instance, the amount of time respondents engaged with friends socially in-person decreased from 2003 (60-minutes/day, 30-hours/month) to 2020 (20-minutes/day, 10-hours/month). This represents a decrease of 20 hours per month spent engaging with friends. This decline is starkest for young people ages 15 to 24. For this age group, time spent in-person with friends has reduced by nearly 70 percent over almost two decades, from roughly 150 minutes per day in 2003 to 40 minutes per day in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated trends in declining social participation. The number of close friendships has also declined over several decades. Among people not reporting loneliness or social isolation, nearly 90% have three or more confidants. Yet, almost half of Americans (49 percent) in 2021 reported having three or fewer close friends — only about a quarter (27 percent) reported the same in 1990. Social connection continued to decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, with one study finding a 16 percent decrease in network size from June 2019 to June 2020 among participants. Graphic: Office of the U.S. Surgeon General

May 6, 2023

U.S. Surgeon General calls for action regarding the ongoing “epidemic of loneliness and isolation”

By Emma Egan 2 May 2023 (ABC News) – The U.S. Surgeon General released an advisory on Tuesday calling attention to the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection in the United States. The report cites recent research showing that approximately half of U.S. adults experienced loneliness daily, even before the onset […]

Lake Tulare in California on 1 February 2023 and 30 April 2023, as seen from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite, and the Operational Land Imager-2 (OLI-2) on the Landsat 9 satellite. In the spring of 2023, the long-dried basin of Lake Tulare rapidly refilled in the wake of intense rainfall and snowmelt. Photo: NASA

May 6, 2023

Tulare Lake flooding due to snowpack melt seen from space – “The state has both too much water and not enough”

By Jess Thomson 5 May 2023 (Newsweek) – The long-dried basin of Lake Tulare in California has rapidly refilled in the wake of intense rainfall and snowmelt. The speed and scale of the southern San Joaquin Valley lake’s return can be seen in images taken from space by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA‘s Landsat […]

Mass killings in the United States by day of year, 2006-2023. 2023 data as of April 29. The year 2023 saw more mass killings than any other year except 2009 since data collection started in 2006. A mass killing is defined as an incident in which four or more victims, not counting the assailant, are killed. Data: The AP/USA TODAY/Northeastern University mass killings database. Graphic: AP

April 30, 2023

Frequent shootings in 2023 put US mass killings on a record pace – “Nobody should be shocked. I visit my daughter in a cemetery. Outrage doesn’t begin to describe how I feel.”

By Stefanie Dazio and Larry Fenn 21 April 2023 LOS ANGELES (AP) – The U.S. is setting a record pace for mass killings in 2023, replaying the horror on a loop roughly once a week so far this year. The carnage has taken 88 lives in 17 mass killings over 111 days. Each time, the […]

Monthly U.S. poverty rates by race/ethnicity, 2020-2022. Graphic: Center on Poverty and Social Policy

April 19, 2023

Poverty is the 4th greatest cause of U.S. deaths – “Poverty silently killed 10 times as many people as all the homicides in 2019. And yet, homicide, firearms, and suicide get vastly more attention.”

By David Danelski 17 April 2023 (UCR) – Poverty has long been linked to shorter lives. But just how many deaths in the United States are associated with poverty? The number has been elusive – until now. A University of California, Riverside, (UCR) paper published Monday, 17 April 2023, in the Journal of the American […]

A seagull walks over seaweed that washed ashore on 16 March 2023 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A huge mass of sargassum seaweed formed in the Atlantic Ocean and headed for the Florida coastlines and shores throughout the Gulf of Mexico. The sargassum, a naturally occurring type of macroalgae, spans more than 5,000 miles. Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images

April 18, 2023

Video: Sargassum seaweed hits Florida Keys beaches

By Richard Burkard 17 April 2023 (Knewz) – It sounds like a B-grade movie title: The approach of the 10-million pound blob. Yet it’s real, and it’s forcing swimmers and owners of beachfront property in Florida to take action. Knewz noted in late March that a giant mass of sargassum seaweed was spotted from space. It […]

Map showing the physical imprint and consequences of extreme summer heat across the Pacific Northwest in 2021. The June-August (JJA) 2021 seasonally averaged temperature anomalies (t2m) over North America calculated from the 1951-1980 mean of ERA5 Reanalysis, with the Pacific Northwest region (PNW; 42–53 °N, 124–115 °W, dark blue box) highlighted. The year 2021 (dashed black line) is shown relative to the distribution (black line) and probability density (red line) curves of JJA t2m values over the period 1950–2021 for the PNW region. White exes indicate the locations of all tree-ring chronology predictors used in the subsequent JJA t2m reconstruction. Graphic: Heeter, et al., 2023 / npj Climate and Atmospheric Science

April 16, 2023

The summer of 2021 was the Pacific Northwest’s hottest in a millennium – “The tree scorch was shocking. The average summer temperatures were extraordinarily away from the norm.”

By Sid Perkins 14 April 2023 (Science News) – A two-week-long heat wave in the Pacific Northwest in 2021 helped make that summer a record breaker for the region (SN: 7/7/21). Now, tree ring data from the area’s forests reveal that the summer of 2021 was also the region’s hottest of the last millennium. The average temperature […]

Physiological response curves may shift as soil microbiomes respond to drought. In the short term (minutes to days), physiological acclimation may help to sustain function, such as soil carbon decomposition. Over weeks to decades, community shifts and evolution could alter response curves to maintain functioning under dry conditions. Broken lines indicate potential variation in the breadth of the shifted response curves. Graphic: Evans, et al., 2022 / Functional Ecology

April 16, 2023

Droughts destroying Earth’s biggest carbon sink on land: study – If more carbon-releasing microbes survive than carbon-sequestering microbes, we could end up with carbon-depleted soils

By Mark Waghorn 12 April 2023 (SWNS) – Droughts are destroying Earth’s biggest carbon sink on land, according to new research. Soil stores more greenhouse gas than plants and the atmosphere combined – thanks to the microbes that live in it. Moisture plays a key role in the process. Lack of rainfall is disrupting this […]