Democratic rep ridiculed over bizarre claim about greed causing drop in life expectancy during the pandemic

News & Politics

A Democratic member of Congress bizarrely claimed that a drop in life expectancy during the pandemic was due to “corporate greed,” and he was mocked mercilessly on social media over it.

Rep. Ro Khanna of California opined on social media that “corporate greed” had led to a steep drop in American life expectancy.

“If you don’t believe corporate greed has deadly consequences, take a look at the decline in American life expectancy. We need #MedicareForAll, and we must raise the minimum wage,” tweeted Khanna with a graph of life expectancy.

What Khanna neglected to notice was that life expectancy had slowly improved nearly every year since 1980 until the last two years, when it showed a steep drop, likely because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Democrat was immediately assailed by those pointing out the glaring problem with his assessment.

“Every once in a while you come across a tweet so mind-bogglingly bad that it instantly disqualifies everything the tweeter has ever said and ever will say,” responded Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute.

“Somehow, the corporate greed and lack of Medicare for All can explain the drop in life expectancy over the last few years, but not the increase in life expectancy in the 35 years prior,” replied comedian Kirk Wilcox.

“Yes if not for corporate greed, we would have had a COVID death rate as low as the UK’s,” replied writer Noah Smith.

“This says life expectancy peaked and then dropped when Obamacare became law after steadily rising for the three decades before Obamacare,” quipped writer Nathan Wurtzel.

“So you think ‘corporate greed’ began or significantly increased, all of a sudden, in 2020? Can you think of anything else that more obviously affects human health and arrived here in 2020?” responded another critic.

“Correlation does not equal causation. Worse here is that he offers no correlation, just baseless theories with no data to support them,” responded researcher Kyle Lamb.

After receiving nearly universal ridicule and mockery, Khanna clarified 14 hours later in a second tweet that he meant to blame the pandemic all along.

“Of course, the pandemic is a cause of this. But the question is what policies on universal healthcare would have mitigated this and how could we have taken better care of essential workers, the elderly and those with underlying health issues,” he tweeted helpfully.

Life expectancy dropped precipitously during the pandemic for reasons obvious to most other people, but in the years leading up to the pandemic, “deaths of despair” from alcohol and opiate abuse also took a toll and slowed life expectancy in the U.S.

Here’s more about U.S. life expectancy dropping:

New study shows life expectancy droppingwww.youtube.com

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