Before Government Statistics

Part 1 - Life expectancies
The Economist magazine publishes this handy little guide "Pocket World in Figures", hey if you like numbers this gives you all kinds of neat data to compare across countries of the world. Like life expectancy:
Egypt: 69.3 years (men), 73.0 years (women)
South Africa: 51.8 years (men), 53.8 years (women)
U.S.: 77.2 years (men), 82.1 years (women)

I hear that South Africa is the great power economy of Africa, but their life expectancy is even lower than Egypt's, which is shocking. I think their leader for a long time denied that AIDS was a problem - just wash your hands, or some stupid response like that. Now if they can come to terms with AIDS as a reality maybe their lifespan can increase.

The percent over age 60:
Egypt: 7.5%, South Africa: 7.3%, U.S. 18.2%
Lately I don't hear politicians who are concerned about the economy railing about social security, or even Medicaid, though both have their sustainable-economic problems. I hear about Medicare. hmm, the baby boomers (us) are hitting retirement age, and this statistic of the percent of the U.S. population over age 60 is going to grow, grow.

Medicare is called an entitlement. So even if you are filthy rich, you get Medicare. When Bill Gates retires, he will get free health care via Medicare. How nice. Why is that. Sounds like socialism to me..

Part 2 - the Bible
The best selling book of all time, 2 billion copies and still available, has been on the shelves of bookstores for 2000 years. So I am starting out on this popular best seller.

In Genesis, during the Noah era (which is pre-Facebook) documented cases tell how people routinely lived into their 800s. That is not a typo but eight-hundred-years.

Maybe the world didn't change as much back then and you could live a happy life into your 800s. After the flood (Noah's flood), well our life expectancy went way downhill.. 100 or so, not much longer.

Part 3 - Someone close to me
When people immigrated here from the "old country" they kept some things. Like their healthy Mediterranean stock.

My dear sweet aunt passed away this past week. Into her 90's, just like my grandma. Well, women in my family have generally lived long lives, not so the men.

She was named after her mother, Carmella, though I knew her as Aunt Cam. I cannot imagine a more optimistic cheery loving and sensible person than her. She will truly be missed.