美国人预期寿命为何降至25年来最低？(上)

There is grim news today about the state of America's health.

今天有关于美国健康状况的严峻消息。

The average expected life span for a person in this country shrank by over seven months last year, according to the CDC.

根据美国疾病控制与预防中心的数据，去年美国人的平均预期寿命缩短了七个多月。

That comes after an even steeper decline in 2020.

在此之前，2020年美国人的预期寿命降幅也很大。

As William Brangham reports, the primary culprit's are COVID-19 and opioid overdoses.

据威廉·布朗汉姆的报道，主要原因是新冠肺炎与阿片类药物使用过量。

Judy, because of this decline, the average American today is now expected to live just 76.4 years.

朱迪，由于这种衰退，现在美国人的平均寿命预计只有76.4岁。

That's lower than it's been in nearly twenty years.

这是近20年来的最低水平。

For more on this new report, I'm joined again by Dr. Steven Woolf.

为了了解这份新报告的详细内容，我再次邀请到了史蒂文·伍尔夫博士。

He's director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University.

他是弗吉尼亚联邦大学社会与健康中心的名誉主任。

Dr. Woolf, nice to have you back on the "NewsHour," although this is sort of awful news to be talking about.

伍尔夫博士，虽然我们要讨论的是个可怕的消息，但仍然很高兴你能再次来到"新闻一小时"栏目。

A year-and-a-half ago, you sat here in our studio, and we had talked about a study that you had just done showing how lifespan in America had dropped by over a year.

一年半前，你坐在我们的演播室里，我们讨论了你刚刚完成的一项研究，该研究显示了美国人的寿命是如何下降了一年多的。

Now the CDC report comes out saying it's dropped another seven months.

现在美国疾病预防控制中心的报告称，美国人的预期寿命又下降了7个月。

Did this report surprise you, that this trend has continued?

这份报告是否让你感到惊讶，这种下降趋势还在继续吗?

Well, I hate to sound like an academic, but yes and no.

嗯，我不想听起来像个学究，但说不准。

It did surprise me, in the sense that 2021, the year that these data are being reported for, was a year in which we had a vaccine available,

这确实让我感到惊讶，因为在2021年，也就是报告这些数据的那一年，我们有了可用的疫苗，

in which many other countries -- enabled many other countries to recover their losses in life expectancy that they had experienced in 2020 during the pandemic.

这使许多其他国家从2020年疫情期间经历的预期寿命减损中恢复过来。

Many countries saw their life expectancy increase.

许多国家的预期寿命都增加了。

So to see ours continue to plummet was very worrying.

因此，看到我们的寿命继续暴跌是非常令人担忧的。

It's not a surprise, in the sense that we have been tracking what we call a U.S. health disadvantage for some years, and all those problems rolled right into the pandemic.

这并不奇怪，因为我们多年来一直在追踪所谓的美国健康劣势，而所有这些问题都直接指向了这场疫情。

One thing that really jumped out at this report to me was that, unlike in past declines, including in your own report, where some groups really fell behind and other groups held on,

这份报告真正让我注意到的一件事是，与过去的寿命下降不同，包括在你的报告中，一些群体的寿命下降了，而另一些群体的寿命仍然坚挺着，

this seemed to be an across-the-board decline, all age groups, all demographics.

这似乎是一次全年龄组的下降，所有人口的下降。

How do you understand that?

你对此是怎么理解的?

People of color in our country were devastated by this pandemic.

我们国家的有色人种遭受了这场疫情的重创。

Black and Hispanic Americans, Native Americans were at much higher risk and sustained very large losses in life expectancy in 2020, much higher than in the white population.

非洲裔美国人、西班牙裔美国人、美洲印第安人的风险要高得多，他们2020年的预期寿命大幅下降，远高于白人人口。

This new data shows that they continued to suffer losses, but it was actually the white population that experienced a larger decrease in life expectancy.

这项新数据表明，他们继续遭受寿命减损，但实际上，白人人口的预期寿命下降幅度更大。

Nonetheless, even with that pattern, death rates were still much higher among people of color.

然而，即使是这样的模式，有色人种的死亡率仍然要高得多。

As to the ages affected, we had already been aware for the -- for the decade preceding this pandemic that we have a problem in this country of rising death rates in the working-age population.

至于受影响的年龄，在这次疫情爆发的前十年，我们已经意识到我们国家面临着劳动年龄人口死亡率上升的问题。

That's people 25 to 64.

25岁到64岁的人群面临着这个问题。

Those groups are not experiencing increasing death rates in other countries. It's just the United States that's having this problem.

在其他国家，这些群体的死亡率并没有上升。只有美国有这样的问题。

So, when the pandemic struck, I wasn't entirely surprised that we had a disproportionate increase in death rates in that young and middle-age group.

因此，当疫情来袭时，我对中青年群体的死亡率不成比例地上升并不完全感到惊讶。

Of course, the elderly were at higher risk.

当然，老年人的风险更高。

So, the increase in death rates among the elderly was also, unfortunately, anticipated.

不幸的是，老年人死亡率的上升也是预料之中的。

What's worrying about this new report is that it's also reporting an increase in death rates in children and adolescents.

这份新报告令人担忧的是，儿童和青少年死亡率也有所上升。

That's not something we had seen before.

我们此前从未见过这样的情况。