I'm Constantly Going to Funerals Lately

I don't know what age you are but when you get to a certain stage RIP.IE is the new social media.

For what it's worth an undertaker friend told me that he now has a keep a good stock of coffins for obese customers, who generally die a lot younger than their non obese cohorts.

Can't talk about though or we'll be called fat shamers.

Its the crap food and pollution (food sources, air, water etc). Processed food is killing us and nobody really talking about it

My father used to say:

"You see plenty of fat men and plenty of old men, but you don't see plenty of fat old men. "

Thank you, I appreciate the sentiment I really do. All the losses provided in my post are true but, it's also a little effort at reductio and absurdum on my part. The OPs logic is absurd and my response to it is an effort to be too.

In real terms the death rate in Ireland is in its normal range. Whereas life expectancy averages used to be thrown off by high infant mortality as well as old age. We now live in one of the lowest infant mortality rate countries in the world. So with very few infants & young people dying? The 1st encounter many have with death outside their immediate family is the contemporary aged person who falls victim to damned statistics.

When you hit your 40s? There will be a spike in the number of deaths and serious illnesses affecting people our age. The OP is ascribing that to Putin's nefarious actions, it's bollox.

I hope the medical profession, dieticians and statisticians are reading this thread. So much good information they never knew about.

Putin is an arsehole but the media have done a serious job on people's minds about Russia at this stage. I'm just waiting for him to be blamed on 9/11 next or maybe even the crusades.

It's not really about your lifespan.

The important metric is your health span.

Many people live well into their 80s with many years of poor health.

And of course there's a new multi-systemic virus in the human population now, too, which we didn't have 5 years ago.

it will take a few years for the epidemiologists to really get a handle of how incremental damage from multiple infections is - or isn't - affecting the population overall.

But I'm aware of a few employers who are tracking higher sick leave rates now.

Quite common for organisations to share anonymized attendance and sick rate data. In particular MNC and large employers would subscribe to data feeds and HR journals that gather and share such data to allow for accurate basis for work force planning and so on.

Hope you don't know me

As my father would say, "there's people dying today that never died before".

His other funerial quip is about how he'd like to be buried, it's a bit more coarse than the one above, suffice to say the quip involves the name Bibi Baskin.

if you ever look at rip.ie, it’s always quite sobering to see how many younger people that are dying.

My parents who are at a reasonably advanced age could between them go to a funeral a month but when I’m looking up mass and removal times for them the number of teens and people too 18-50 who are dying. Sobering…cancer and sudden deaths, heart attacks, brain aneurysms or other neurological conditions. According to the WHO incidences Parkinson’s disease and dementia and strokes have almost doubled over the last 30 years. Real increase in neuro issues / conditions.

Excess death rate in Ireland is well above average.

A combination of (a) the increase in the absolute number of the population, and (b) the increase in the average age of that population.

The table you've quoted compares the total number of deaths of two time periods e.g. in March 2023 there were 9.2% more deaths than than the average number of deaths in March from 2016-2019 - so if the average number of deaths in March 2016-2019 was 1,000, then the number of deaths in March 2023 was 1,092. But that doesn't take into account that there were more people in Ireland in March 2023 - our population is growing. There are simply more people in the country, you would expect more deaths.

But population increase alone doesn't account for a 9.2% increase, which brings me to my next point: that population is also, on average, older. In 2016, people over 65 accounted for 13.3% of the population. In 2023, it was 15.3%. 83% of all deaths comes from the over-65 age group. As that group continues to make up a larger proportion of the population, total mortality figures will continue to increase.

An increase in excess mortality is expected if your population is growing or getting older. Ours is doing both. The total number of deaths was projected to increase from around 30,000 in 2017 to around 38,500 in 2030 (based off the 2016 census, the projection based off the last census hasn't been released yet)

Sources:

[1] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/fp/fp-mpds/measuringmortalityusingpublicdatasources2019-2023october2019-june2023/

[2] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-mip/measuringirelandsprogress2022/society/

(and if anyone gets a sense of déjà vu, yes, I did make the exact same post in response to the exact same chart last month)

the cycle of life birth marriage death ,

most people get married before they are 35 or never get married at all .

to some extent life is predictable a series of fairly predictable stages

And a chance to meet your local TD's.

the fall of a dry leaf is a warning to the green ones.

The world has just become more adventurous, more options to travel, more everything since when our parents where young.

Nobody would have even thought traveling the world or going to Oz for a year was possible 40 years ago.

A car was a luxury. Take aways were once a year.

It all adds up.

Ahh, travel was a lot more adventurous pre Internet than it is now.

Nobody would have even thought traveling the world or going to Oz for a year was possible 40 years ago.

The number of Irish people in Oz/NZ 40+ years ago suggests otherwise.

And young people from that side of the world were certainly coming to the UK for "the big OE" too.

Then I’ve no explanation😂