Not all pollen is the same

[Occam]

I'm going with the "dirt is good for you" idea. ... exposure to stuff builds up resistance, kinda thing.
Also, can't help but think being inside and breathing filtered AC air might have something to do with being more sensitive to pollen.

plus ... that means... when I was a kid and made my little sister take a bite of a mud pie .. I was just helping her build her immune system

This is absolutely a big factor. Allergies started spiking the more prevalent central heat and air had become and the more sealed from the outside of houses are. We weren't made to be separate from nature in our daily lives we're a part of nature. When we live in ways we weren't made to live we develop problems we weren't meant to have.  That said I agree with Kathy, it's death by a million cuts. There are so many factors bombarding us that "progress" and industrialization have brought us that weren't faced by most 100 years ago, we're quickly careening towards illness and disease.

[max2]

Occam - is this related?
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220831.htm

[Kathyp]

Max, one of the interesting things in your article is this:  The declines in life expectancy since 2019 are largely driven by the pandemic. COVID-19 deaths contributed to nearly three-fourths or 74% of the decline from 2019 to 2020 and 50% of the decline from 2020 to 2021. An estimated 16% of the decline in life expectancy from 2020 to 2021 can be attributed to increases in deaths from accidents/unintentional injuries. Drug overdose deaths account for nearly half of all unintentional injury deaths. The most recent data reported by NCHS showed more than 109,000 overdose deaths in the one-year period ending in March of 2022.

Again, I think there are multiple reasons but have you read the reports on excess deaths during and after COVID?  That's some interesting stuff and still being analyzed. 

The stats on fentanyl deaths are staggering too.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/895945/fentanyl-overdose-deaths-us/

Unlike past drug use spikes, this one is almost 100% coming from the outside.  People used to cook meth here, but fentanyl is coming in by the truck load through Mexico, ingredients courtesy of China.  It's a big problem and one that hurts a lot of innocent people because the stuff is so toxic you can be poisoned just by touching something that has fentanyl on it.

Other things, like infant and maternal deaths, and some lifestyle diseases we can't really use in the stats because people who come in from other countries often have not had good healthcare or healthcare at all, so they should be excluded from these stats.

[Occam]

Occam - is this related?
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220831.htm

I couldn't say, I was referencing allergies and illness not death itself. My "death by a million cuts" comment was a figure of speech. That said illness and disease, especially chronic, can and do lead to death. It does behoove us to be circumspect about what we're doing in our personal lives, reducing our use of plastics, growing our own food sources, living and working with nature as much as possible instead of trying to control or subdue it. We're pretty short lived and weak beings if we're honest with ourselves, nature will always outlast us and wear us out with its relentless force. We would do well to do all we can to come alongside nature, learn from nature, mimic nature, and we would find ourselves healthier, more satisfied, and more fulfilled in life. Building our houses and offices to be sealed off, growing our food in labs, separating ourselves in as many ways as we can, and then expecting that our bodies wouldn't react to an outside force like pollen is completely asinine and insane of us to think. Climate change isnt the issue, it's us. Even if climate change (and climate always changes, always has always will with or without us) is increasing the pollen around us, if we spent the majority of our time outdoors, or in an environment with free airflow from outside to inside like 100 years ago this wouldn't be a conversation because our bodies would be adapting to the slight (relatively speaking) change in pollen versus what we now encounter when we leave our sealed off, filtered, and sanitized environments

[max2]

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/life-aging/study-high-pollen-concentrations-increase-blood-pressure/79323583?utm_source=multiple&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=news_en&utm_content=o&utm_term=wpblock_teaser-wide-card-query-list

[Ben Framed]

Max,
Can you give a brief description of what is in your article? I get this when I click on the link.

SWI swissinfo.ch

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[Occam]

Copy and pasted from the link

Researchers at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) were able to demonstrate for the first time that pollen has an effect on cardiovascular disease. The study, published on Friday in the journal Environmental Health, involved 400 participants in the Basel region in 2021 and 2022.

?Pollen allergy is a growing public health problem,? the researchers declared. The pollen season is likely to become longer and more intense as a result of climate change. It is estimated that around 20% of adults globally are allergic to pollen.

+ Intense pollen year leads to severe stress for allergy sufferers

Their study found that during periods with very high pollen concentrations, systolic and diastolic blood pressure increased on average by 2.0 mmHg and 1.5 mmHg respectively, compared to no-pollen days. Blood pressure effects were already evident at small pollen concentrations and continuously increased with increasing pollen in the air. The effect was markedly stronger for women and people with a high body-mass index.

+ New technology brings relief to people with pollen allergies

According to the specialists, these results are important for public health. Pollen allergies and hypertension are two of the most common chronic diseases in Europe,? they write.

It is therefore important that the health effects of allergenic trees are taken into account to a greater extent in future, for example in urban planning. Urban trees are important for providing shade, particularly in view of climate change, but there are alternatives to highly allergenic birch trees, the researchers write.

Adapted from French by DeepL/sb