My PSA Today: 27 Charts That Explain How We Die
This is my PSA today. These charts at Vox are vital for the rest of your life, learn them well friends and live longer for the rest of us even if you sometimes don’t feel like doing it for yourself. Persist in defeating your akrasia; those urges that keep you doing things that are against your best judgement; persist and try again even after you slip. You can do it because we all want you to stick around.
In this world,” Benjamin Franklin once said, “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” While we all know that we will die, how and when have changed dramatically over the last century. We’ve seen common illnesses brought to the brink of eradication because of the invention of vaccines. We’ve seen quality of life — like nutrition, sanitation — go up in many parts of the world, while infections from communicable diseases dropped. With antibiotics, surgery became safer. So did one of the most common acts of all: childbirth. All this has amounted to a vast extension in the number of years many of us spend on the planet. But we’ve also seen that this progress is not evenly distributed across societies and may soon be undone if we don’t alter some of our behavior. Here are 27 charts and maps that explain how we die.