New Yorker (August 28)
“Japan is the first nation to experience a demographic tipping point where more than twenty per cent of the population is over sixty-five years old.” This magnifies the effects of climate change. Hot summer weather in Tokyo now lasts “some fifty days longer in recent years as compared with the twentieth century.” The additional “heat has proven a silent killer of these older citizens. Thirteen hundred people die of heatstroke annually in the country, the majority of them elderly.”
Tags: Climate change, Demographic, Elderly, Heatstroke, Hot, Japan, Magnifies, Over sixty-five, Population, Silent killer, Summer weather, Tipping point, Tokyo
Wall Street Journal (April 14)
“Events in Hong Kong and Shanghai have demonstrated that a ‘zero Covid’ strategy can look very effective for a long time—until suddenly it isn’t, either because a more infectious variant changes the game or because success itself breeds overconfidence.” Unless the Chinese government moves “quickly to vaccinate and boost its elderly, and start spending much more heavily on hospital capacity, then the human and economic consequences could be disastrous.”
Tags: Boost, China, Consequences, Disastrous, Elderly, Events, Government, Hong Kong, Hospital capacity, Infectious, Overconfidence, Shanghai, Vaccinate, Variant, Zero COVID
The Economist (November 27)
The EU is currently “recording nearly a quarter of a million cases a day,” its highest levels ever, and the WHO has warned “that 700,000 more Europeans could die by March.” Eventually, “covid-19 will probably settle down as a seasonal disease, a lethal threat to the elderly and the poor in health, but to everyone else mostly a nuisance. However, as Europe is discovering, getting there will be perilous.”
Tags: Cases, COVID-19, Die, Elderly, EU, Europe, Health, Highest, Lethal threat, March, Nuisance, Poor, Seasonal disease, WHO
USA Today (July19)
“A doubling of COVID-19 cases in the past two weeks suggests the USA has entered a fourth wave of the pandemic.” Deaths and hospitalization rates may stay lower than previous waves and instead of ravaging “entire communities,” this wave “is likely to target the unvaccinated, including children, and if rates are high enough, the most vulnerable of the vaccinated—the elderly and the immunocompromised.”
Tags: Children, COVID-19, Deaths, Doubling, Elderly, Fourth wave, Hospitalization, Pandemic, Ravaging, U.S., Unvaccinated, Vulnerable
Time (April 22)
“Greece has an elderly population and a fragile economy,” but despite being a tourist mecca has somehow “escaped the worst of the coronavirus so far….with only 2,245 confirmed cases and 116 deaths as of April 21, one of the lowest counts in the European Union.” Some of this may be luck, but experts are attributing the early imposition of stringent “measures, and the way Greeks have largely abided by them.”
Tags: Confirmed, Coronavirus, Deaths, Economy, Elderly, EU, Fragile, Greece, Greeks, Population, Stringent “measures, Tourist
Wall Street Journal (May 17)
“American women are having children at the lowest rate on record, with the number of babies born in the U.S. last year dropping to a 30-year low…. The figures suggest that a number of women who put off having babies after the 2007-09 recession are forgoing them altogether.” This could spell trouble as America’s aging population is already “creating a funding imbalance that strains the social safety net that supports the elderly.”
Tags: Aging, Babies, Children, Elderly, Funding, Population, Recession, Safety net, U.S., Women
Financial Times (June 7)
“Given today’s high level of public sector debt and worsening demographics, it is inevitable that governments will resort to soft forms of default, including inflation, to escape from their fiscal straitjacket. This is a world in which elderly savers will be condemned to subsidise borrowers for a long time.”
Tags: Borrowers, Debt, Default, Demographics, Elderly, Governments, Inevitable, Inflation, Public sector, Savers
Bloomberg (December 15)
“A surge in Tokyo’s elderly population over the next 10 years may overwhelm urban healthcare systems; while depopulation and stagnant economies in rural Japan are set to leave nursing homes and hospitals half-empty.” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing “an audacious idea” of motivating urban elderly to relocate to Japan’s countryside.
Tags: Abe, Audacious, Countryside., Depopulation, Elderly, Healthcare, Hospitals, Japan, Nursing homes, Rural, Surge, Tokyo, Urban
The Economist (April 11)
“Radical measures are needed” in Japan. These “will have to include getting elderly Japanese to pay more for their medical care. A health system that keeps too many people in hospital beds for too long needs to be overhauled. And the retirement age needs to be increased further.”
Tags: Elderly, Health system, Hospital, Japan, Medical care, Overhaul, Radical, Retirement
Washington Post (February 8)
“The central budget issue of our time” is quite simple, but overlooked. “Spending on the elderly and health care is slowly overwhelming the rest of the federal government. Spending on other vital activities (from defense to financial regulation) is being sacrificed to cover the growing costs of a graying nation.”
