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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This graph displays the correlations, r's between age 20-64 death rates and the number of Southern Baptist churches listed in the current Yellow Pages per 100,000 people from 1999 through 2024. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Mortality #Religion

The relationship between Southern Baptist and people handling the possibility of death is so complex that I don't have room to describe it here but a good description is here:

https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/southern-baptists-in-alabama/

Essentially the above cited article describes how Fundamentalist, adopted avoiding science based health care. Above I show how a major portion, Southern Baptist, are the major source of the higher death rates seen in the Fundamentalist population. Correlation is the statistic produced in regression analysis, I am going to go ahead and show graphs for the other two: Regression coefficients, b and intercepts, a. in the next two graps

This display of the regression coefficients, b's, showing the amount of change in death rates each additional baptist church per 100,000 had on the death rates. Since this shows the same pattern as the total effect, the increase in the number of Southern Baptist deaths is due to increase in this so called religion's effect on he number of deaths is due to is due to Something in Southern Baptism causing more deaths instead of the usual cause in a number of deaths. This is due to an increase in the effect of X not the number of cases moving into this X. And it seems to be interacting with the introduction of COVID to reduce the huge increase at the end of this graph.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I have been failing to look at Canada's changing death rates by age. I have shown the United States middle age increasing while assuming it is not happening in Canada. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Canada #USA #Mortality

For a few years I have been posting the fact that the younger middle age death rates have been going up in the United States. My problem has been I have assumed it was unique to the United States. This graph shows this effect is almost as strong in Canada as it is in the United States. Clearly I have been wrong to blame this increase on unique United State's middle aged health insurance.

In a ranking of country life expectancy at:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/life-expectancy-by-country The United States life expectancy of 79.8 ranks 62 among countries compared to Canada ranking 25th at 83.

That comparison in ranking simply ignores that Canada shares the United State's major high death rate problem, but not quite as badly.

I need to look for age composition death rates for some other countries and see if I can find out what is going on.

If any of you are Canadians reading this and have ideas about what is going on to cause this, I would like to hear from you.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Just calculated state vote for president percent for Trump in last election related to total COVID deaths.A hypothetical 100% Republican voting State was 3.99 times as high as the hypothetical 0 % Republican. Actual stats and graphs later. 💡🧪☠️ #Sociology #Population #Politics #COVID

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Here is a second way to display the effect of age by country effects on Canada's and the USA's age grouped death rates.🧪💡☠️ #population #politics #sociology #Canada

In the second window here I will re-display the graph that I posted yesterday. If you want to tell me how you feel about the difference, please do. To let you compare the two ways of displaying the differences my old way of displaying is posted below.

The main thing this graph shows is that Canada suffered the increases in middle aged death rates much like the United States does. I have been blaming the USA increases in middle aged death rates on how our middle aged having health care paid for by capitalist health insurance. As it is, I am at a total loss in trying to explain the difference as a capitalist health insurance denying care effect. In general this tells me that I goofed when making explanations by comparing differences in total death rates.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Here is the percent change in the compatible Canada and USA age group death rates from 1999 to 2024. The surprising thing is the Canada's middle age death rates went up very much like the United States.🧪💡☠️ #Canada #USA #Population #Demography

I have been comparing Canada's and the USA's death rates for quite a while. This is the first time I have compared changes in age groups. This measure of change covers a quarter of a century and the changes by age surprises me more than anything I have seen while playing with mortality data for a long time. I came into producing this graph believing that Canada did a much better job than the United
States at bringing death rates down. The Canadians experiencing such similar increases in middle age death rates in this graph just surprised me more than anything else has in a long time. I have long believed that the increase in younger middle aged death rates in the United States was unique. Here I see Canada is imitating what I have long seen as the United States unique increase in the middle aged death rates.

I will do more with this to see what I can find out.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

West Virginia has the highest death rate of all the states. This graph shows the percent change from the combined 1999-2000 county death rates and the single year, 2020, death rates. See text for details on why these years. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Politics

The numbers in each state, Pleasants County, WV is missing it's 13.8 in he graph, shows the percent change in the county's total death rates from 1999 and 2000 combined and the single year 2020. The first two years are combined to eliminate missing data for one County. The data for the single year 2020 is used instead of later dater because it is the last our Bureau of Vital Statistics have made available,.

In general West Virginia has the highest mortality and largest increase over the last two decades of any state. I am keeping this short so I can present the data with county name.

Here are the data:
County Pct chg 1999-2000 to 1020
Barbour County, WV 30.0
Berkeley County, WV 33.1
Boone County, WV 48.1
Braxton County, WV 27.7
Brooke County, WV 38.6
Cabell County, WV 27.1
Calhoun County, WV 15.9
Clay County, WV 54.2
Doddridge County, WV -15.1
Fayette County, WV 33.2
Gilmer County, WV 5.4
Grant County, WV 31.5
Greenbrier County, WV 28.5
Hampshire County, WV 50.9
Hancock County, WV 46.1
Hardy County, WV 46.0
Harrison County, WV 1.5
Jackson County, WV 15.9
Jefferson County, WV 20.0
Kanawha County, WV 36.4
Lewis County, WV 47.2
Lincoln County, WV 50.0
Logan County, WV 55.7
McDowell County, WV 60.2
Marion County, WV 7.7
Marshall County, WV 34.5
Mason County, WV 23.9
Mercer County, WV 37.2
Mineral County, WV 33.7
Mingo County, WV 71.0
Monongalia County, WV -4.9
Monroe County, WV 35.8
Morgan County, WV 38.5
Nicholas County, WV 30.6
Ohio County, WV 22.4
Pendleton County, WV 48.2
Pleasants County, WV 13.8
Pocahontas County, WV 45.1
Preston County, WV 11.4
Putnam County, WV 34.4
Raleigh County, WV 45.5
Randolph County, WV 39.8
Ritchie County, WV 18.9
Roane County, WV 44.3
Summers County, WV 42.4
Taylor County, WV 26.7
Tucker County, WV 45.3
Tyler County, WV -11.7
Upshur County, WV 18.7
Wayne County, WV 59.1
Webster County, WV 30.3
Wetzel County, WV 27.3
Wirt County, WV 106.2
Wood County, WV 33.3
Wyoming County, WV 63.0

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Here is a post that shows the percent change in single year age death rates from 1999-2000 to 2023-2024 separately by the party their state votes for.🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Republicans #Democrats

This is a modified version of a graph I have shown several of over the past couple of years. The big change is I used two years of data in the early and late date. The big thing that it does is substantially reduce the bouncing around in the younger ages. The single year age data for the younger ages has so few cases that their bouncing around due to small numbers is made to look too important in the single year age data.

The main thing it shows again is from about age 15 to about age 30 declining about 25 percent to increasing about 40 percent.

The next most important thing it shows is that after age 30, showing these percentages by the party the state votes for shows that Republican voting states have higher death rates than Mixed Party voting states who have higher death rates than Mixed Party voting states for all the age groups but 85+ where the mixed party is higher than the Republicans who are still higher than Democrats.

I could say a lot more about this but I have decided to keep it simple to see if that increases readership.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

This more complex graph shows the single year age for ages 0-84 and the grouped data for 85+ from 1999 to 2024 for Non-Hispanic Whites, Hispanics and Black. The big thing it shows is that our middle age death rates have been going up. #Sociology #Population #Hispanics #Blacks

I will keep this description short and simple to make it easier to remember. First, the major difference is by age group. In the United States age determines how health care is paid for. The young primarily have capitalist health care backed up in most states by socialist care for the uninsured. The middle are health care is dominated by capitalist health care and the elderly have the most socialist, Medicare, mostly copies by a capitalist wanting to show there are equivalent.

The two things I most notice among the young is how much higher Black death rates are among the older young. I need to look at that in more detail sometime in the future. and second they are almost all showing declines.

The major thing I see as I look at the middle aged is that moving into the middle age shows a very consistent shift into increasing death rates. But that shift stops going up before the other two. Their death rate is not lower but already so high that the height limits their going up more, in other words, it is not a good sign.

The next major thing I see is both Black and Hispanic death rates go down quicker from the early middle age peak than the Non-Hispanic Whites.

The last thing I will mention is that the percentage change among the young and old is very similar. The young bounce around more but that could be a function of the much lower death rate among the young. small numbers simply bounce around more than large numbers.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

2024 data has been available for a while. Here is a comparison of Blacks and Hispanics single year age death rates with Non-Hispanic White same death rates for that year. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Blacks #Hispanics

This graph shows how single year age death rates of Blacks and Hispanics compares with the Non-Hispanic white death rates in the last year of available data, 2024.The major thing it does not show is how each group has changed in deaths per 100,000.

I don't think most people will be surprised to see Black death rates are higher than Whites but I suspect many will be surprised at how much higher and how much longer by age.

I suspect most will be surprised at how much lower and consistent Hispanic death rates are at the middle ages and older. After age 40 Hispanic death rates average only about 71 percent as high as Non-Hispanic Whites.

The there are two main things this graph does not show. The first is how our middle age death rates have been increasing since 1999. The second one is how ethnic differences have changed over time. I am working on a graph to show that and I will post it as soon as I finish.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

My preferred way to compare death rates is to use a graph to show single year age death rates for the population with the higher death rate, here Non-Hispanic Whites, as a percent of the the population with the lower death rates, Hispanics. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Hispanics

This graph shows the single year age death rates of Non-Hispanic Whites as a percent of the Hispanics of all races of the same age. I feel this is a better way to show differences in death rates than the standard demographic way of showing differences, comparing life expectancy. The 2024 life expediencies for Hispanics is 81.8 and Non-Hispanic Whites is 78.8. In general I think this graph presents a lot more information than the two numbers and it does it in a way that more people are likely to understand. The main thing I think this shows is the Hispanic death rate is higher for age 15 through 25, I think this is just another effect of capitalist health care in the United States.

The major weakness I see in this graph is that it does not show the difference in the number of death by age. For Example among Hispanics the number of deaths at age 25 is 1,011 while the number at age 75 is 5,256. Then among Whites the number at age 25 is 26,222 and the number at at age 75 is 59,172. The age group ratios are very different because of differences in age composition of the two populations.

In general I think the main thing the graph shows is that the Non-Hispanic White death rates are about 45% higher that Hispanics for ages that most of the deaths occur in.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

The 2024 death data is out. The states not voting for Democrats experienced 367,184 age 20-64 deaths. If they had the Democrat states death rate that would have been 292,681. That is 94,503 or 24.4% fewer. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #politics A more detailed post will be made later.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

The 2024 mortality data is out. The states not voting consistently voting for Democrats had 367,184 age 20-64 deaths. If the had Democrat voting state death rates that would have been292,681 or 94,503, 24.9% fewer. 🧪💡

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

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

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

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. ☠️🧪

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

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

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

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.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

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.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

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/

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

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.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

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

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

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

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

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

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

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

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

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%.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

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

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

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

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

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

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

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.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

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.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

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

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Reposted by Dr. James H. Gundlach

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

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.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

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

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

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)

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

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.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

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.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

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

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

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.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

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.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

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."

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

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

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

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.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

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

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Here is a graph displaying the correlation, r, between year from 1999 through 2024 and the number of deaths per 100,000 for the total population by single year age, 0-84 and 85+. See text for more details. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Politics

All the dots above the line of numbers showing age show death rates increasing over these years and those dots below that line show declining death rates. The further a dot is from the zero line, the more constant the amount of change from year to year.

When I look at that set of correlations between year and death rates, I think of how these correlations change by how we pay for health care. The infants have the most consistently supported efforts to keep them alive and they have the strongest negative correlations, very close to that ideal -1.00. Then the young from age one through the late teens have fairly strong negative correlations are primary covered by their parent's capitalist health insurance but most states provide socialist health care for most of the uninsured young. The fact that they are all below zero is fair but the fact that they are a lot higher than the infants is bad. Then that line of dots going from strong negatives to positives close to 0.80 show the consistent increases in death rates with increasing age up to age 30. Then the correlations decline to close to zero indicating little change for a decade from the middle 40's to the middle 50's. Then from about age 55 to age 70 there is a consistent higher rate of declining death rates. This is the period when Medicaid and the capitalist clone, Medicare, phase in. Then and only then does the trend in death rates get almost as good as there were during the first year of life. What is happening here? Medicare, a nearly complete socialist health care is phased in with the almost as good copy, Medicare.

If I repeated this graph for Canada and most of the other industrialized countries, the line of dots would be close to strait across close to -1.00 from age 0 to 90. Not only do they have better health care they have yearly data by age for several years past our 84.

Our death rate changes since 1999 clearly show that capitalist health care simply kills us early.

Who makes our laws?

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

What's up over time in the United States? Most consistently the middle aged death rates and only recently the age 1-29. This graph shows the yearly death rates of our population divided into groups based on how health care is paid for. See text for details. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Politics

The United States is unique among the industrialized societies because we pay the most for health care and are not even in the top fifty of the lists of countries ranked by life expectancy now that our CIA has deleted their ranking of countries, they had us 49th, unique among the on-line rankings I have found.

Looking at the graph the most unique thing I see is that the middle aged death rates, excluding COVID have consistently gone up and this rate has substantially increased during the COVID years. Then it declined substantially since 2021, when COVID vaccine was available. This increase has been seen as a possible miss classification of COVID deaths. But a look at the age 65+ and 0-18 death rates, we can see that among them the non-COVID death rates are uniquer declining death rates in their ages groups. This difference in the middle age and elderly non-COVID death rates during the COVID epidemic makes me think the capitalist health insurance industry used the COVID epidemic as an opportunity to deny more care. Unfortunately, we have no measure of the number of people needing health care were denied care by the misnamed health insurance industry.

The fairly consistent decline in the infant and age 65+ death care rates just happen to be by the people who are not entirely dependent on the health insurance industry to receive care. Most of the elderly have access to Medicare and the capitalist incomplete clone while almost all the states pay for emergency care for the uninsured young.

The last point I will make is the decline in non-COVID death rates among the ages 1-64 also happened during the time President Biden implement several improvements to their access to health care during his single term as president. Here is a link to one discussion of most of them:

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/bidens-public-health-wins

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

I have look into old research findings I have not written up and I found this look at this attempt to look at the effect of eating jicama how long people live worth posting. The graph is the raw statistical output using AcaStat. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Health

Here are some regression results I produced back in 2019. I tried to re-do it with more current data but I can no longer get any of my web browsers to search and capture the data. What I did was conduct searches for each country name and the word jicama for all the countries listed in the now extinct CIA World Factbook. (yes they spelled it as one word) But Trump's administration has deleted the web site with no announcement. In general I am trying to put together the data to do this again with more current data but everything I am trying does not work.

If you see the mean for the dummy variable jicama, you will see 0.203 which means 20.3% of the countries have a 1 on the dummy variable included in the regression equation with all the other variables I found significantly related to country life expectancy. Now, the list of other variables cannot be considered inclusive but with a multiple r of 0.74 . That means you can reduce your errors in predicting country life expectancy by 74% when you use these variables. I looked at the effect of several other variables and have excluded the others that hat a p >.05.

The important statistic is the b=4.32 for the jicama dummy variable. That means when you control for the effect of percent obese, money spent on health care and median country income, the jicama eating countries have a life expectancy that is 4.32 years longer than the countries that don't.

Now this is not solid enough research to be published in our properly reviewed journals but adding it as a regular vegetable that replaces another regularly really does not cost more and adds income to the people who grow jicama, or even growing it yourself, here is a link to see if you can grow it:

https://theultimatehomestead.com/planting-guide/jicama/texas/

Oh, I live near Montgomery, Alabama and there is an international grocery store there that sells good fresh jicama for less than $1.00 per pound.

And, this is just another way I looked at life expectancy.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

I have a very limited energy problem and am headed in to have the connection to between my heart and lungs checked, the other one was checked earlier and was found clear, to look for a possible blockage causing the problem. I will let you know what they find. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

Here is a look at our infant deaths rates in states grouped by party and Canada added to show what it should be close to. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Canada

This is a simple graph, the higher the vertical golden bar, the higher the death rate. And toward the top of each gold bar is the number of infant deaths per 100,000 under that population that group of states experienced in 2024.

Canada ranks near the top of most efforts to rank countries by life expectancy. Our Democratic voting states have an infant death rate that is 14.4 percent higher than Canada's. The Mixed Party states death rate is 596.2, that is 212.2 deaths per 100,000 or 55.3 percent higher The Republican voting states have an infant death rate of 655.6 deaths per 100,000, that is 271.6 deaths per 100,000 or 70.7 percent higher.

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Here is a graph that is so clear in showing the relationship between state percent smoking cigarettes and state death rates that about all I can do is report the correlation, r-0.88, regression coefficient, b= -0.44 and intercept a= 86.65. See text for more. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Smoking

The a,.yx posted earlier is the life expectancy for the hypothetical state with no cigarette smokers, 86.65 years. Again that is the age by which half of the non-smokers would die. The b.yx, the regression coefficient is a -.,4392 which is the change in life expectancy for each percent smoking. Multiplying that -.4392 by 100 to estimated the death rate of the 100% smoking population the means that estimate is 86.65 minus 43.92 or a life expectancy of only 42.73 years.

Now I have looked at the percent smoking and national life expectancy and found that the United States has a much lower life expectancy than the national level data, both sets of data suggest that cigarettes in the United States are much more deadly than they are in other countries,.

Well, here is the state data, life expectancy and percent smoking cigaretts are shortened to effective label the columns of data:

ST lifeexp % cigsmok
AL 75.5 21.1
AK 78.2 19.9
AZ 79.3 16.5
AR 75.9 24.7
CA 81.2 12.9
CO 80.2 15.7
CT 80.6 15.4
DE 78.4 19.9
FL 78.5 17.6
GA 79.6 17.4
HI 81.6 14.1
ID 79.6 15.9
IL 79.3 16.5
IN 77.1 22.9
IA 79.1 18.5
KS 78.3 18.1
KY 75.6 26.2
LA 76 24
ME 78.4 19.3
MD 79 14.6
MA 80.7 14.7
MI 78.1 21.2
MN 80.6 16.3
MS 74.5 23
MO 77.2 20.6
MT 78.6 19.9
NE 79.4 17.3
NV 78.3 17
NH 79.6 17.5
NJ 80.5 15.1
NM 77.2 19.1
NY 81.2 14.4
NC 77.8 19.1
ND 79.2 19.9
OH 77 21
OK 75.9 21.1
OR 79.6 17
PA 78.5 19.9
RI 79.8 16.3
SC 76.9 21.5
SD 78.5 18.6
TN 75.8 24.2
TX 78.8 14.5
UT 79.9 9.7
VT 79.9 16.4
VA 79.3 19.5
WA 80.2 15.3
WV 74.7 26.7
WI 79.3 17.4
WY 78.3 19.5

P.S.: I am glad I quit smoking back when I was a sophomore at Oklahoma State University. It was hard, I had the last urge to get a cigarette about six years after I quit.

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Reposted by Dr. James H. Gundlach

Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Here are a pair of requested graphs that show the party differences pattern by sex as well as party. These show total population with COVID removed since 2020. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population

Here I will do two things, discuss the party differences and post the data:

Among females the mixed party is closer to the high death rate Republicans than they are among males. Why? Discrimination against females is harder to fight than it is among males.

Here is the data:
Year Dem F. Rep F Mixed Females
1999 797.9 945 905.4
2000 794.2 945.1 908.2
2001 794.1 941.1 894.9
2002 788.1 946.2 900.4
2003 783.4 940.3 894.3
2004 758.4 907 868.4
2005 764.1 915.7 882.7
2006 749.6 894.6 859.7
2007 736.8 881.8 850.7
2008 740.7 897.1 864.2
2009 720.1 870.5 839.4
2010 720.2 881.4 850
2011 730.2 885.7 865.6
2012 725.4 892.6 864.9
2013 733.1 901.2 873.6
2014 725.1 901.6 875.2
2015 746.6 916.5 898
2016 745.1 920 895.5
2017 755.5 934.1 908.7
2018 753 935.6 907.1
2019 750.3 929.6 906.7
2020 790.7 977.3 948.7
2021 768.5 984.8 936
2022 793.4 991.8 950.9
2023 774.5 963.7 927.9
2024 762.3 959.3 923.2

The male graph displays the dots with the same death rate scale as the earlier one for females. The main difference is the mixed party males are much closer to the middle than the females. The way they are most alike is they reflect very much the same time trends.

The most optimistic part of the graph it shows a turn around to a rational declining declining death rate in the entire country after a decade of increasing death rates, Biden was successful in producing the rational turn-around.

Here is the male data, it is available but removing the COVID is not easy and doing it makes me later at posting this than I expected.

Year Dem Rep Males Mixed Males
1999 791 978.5 897.7
2000 782.5 974.7 890.4
2001 777.3 966.7 880.9
2002 777 971.4 886.7
2003 773.2 967.6 877.4
2004 750.1 940.3 860.3
2005 757.7 955.1 871.8
2006 749.1 941.9 856.7
2007 740.7 928.5 853.8
2008 742.8 942.3 863.3
2009 730.5 928.4 851
2010 728.5 939.5 861.1
2011 738.5 943.3 870.7
2012 740.6 950.8 877.3
2013 753 968.2 895.5
2014 754.1 980.3 906.2
2015 775.5 1005.5 930.3
2016 788.3 1014.2 948.5
2017 800.5 1037.7 966.5
2018 809.6 1042.8 973.7
2019 817.2 1051.3 976.9
2020 876.5 1119.4 1038.4
2021 862.8 1134.5 1043.6
2022 879.7 1119.8 1045.2
2023 867 1096.1 1023.5
2024 843.2 1078.4 1006.7

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Dr. James H. Gundlach @pecanjim.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

Here are five years of COVID death rates plotted by state percent foreign immigrants. See text for comments. 🧪💡☠️ #Sociology #Population #Political #Demography

The dots are too scattered to make sense up until the last couple of years and by then the slope is too small to really see.

But the lines show a slight increase in COVID rates by immigration rates during the first year, the blue line. The second year, the red one, shows the most pronounced negative relationship, followed by an almost parallel sloping line for the third year. The fourth and fifth years show much lower COVID death rates that slope less, and I don't know if the reason I can see it is I spend so much time looking at scatter plots I don't know if the reason I can see it is because I spend so much time playing with them .

Anyway, the slopes, aka regression coefficients, by years are: 2020 = 0.77, 2021 = -1.77, 2022 = -0.75, 2023 = -0.25 and 2024 = -0.16. Yes, all of them after vaccine became available are negative.

Now the reason I put this together is in response to someone blaming immigrants for causing our COVID deaths. I actually think most of our contact with germs in the rest of the world is through air planes and just like immigrants, the ones coming from the rest of the world, evein if they are Americans who just spent a little time there, most of them hit coastal states first. The major difference I see is that after COVID vaccines are available, the percent immigrant is negative related to death rates and that may related the the Southern Baptist refusing vaccination and they are home grown not imported.

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