While assassinations aren’t exactly rare in Russia, I do find it slightly funny when people immediately suspect foul play when old men in stressful jobs die in Russia. Especially in a country renowned for the prevalence of alcoholism.
I mean, the average male life expectancy is under 65 in Russia. This guy didn’t even die particularly prematurely by Russian standards. And it’s not as if he looks like the picture of health in the picture attached to the article.
Well, you have to factor the guy’ s class into it, not just his age.
The problem with the “avg age at time of death” is that it picks up thinks like infant mortality (1.7% in 2002 and 2.9% in 1979). You also have to look at the contribution of wealth and class.
Even there, the better metric for a person might be “expected years of life remaining.” Since someone who is 65 didn’t die in infancy and wasn’t killed as a teen, all of those factors (which drag life expectancy down) can be ignored. If you’re still talking populations and cohorts, you’re still factoring in things like poverty and access to healthcare, but it might give a better understanding of the statistical probability of a person to die of natural causes in a hotel at that age.
Russia has a lower infant mortality than the US. Free healthcare. If anything, that lower infant mortality rate would lead you to expect a higher life expectancy than the US.
Although it’s changing, the thing that drags down life expectancy in Russia really is alcoholism. Especially with older generations of men who drink like goldfish:
Apparently, because younger people drink significantly less, life expectancy rose to 68 in 2018. Not too long ago, most Russian men didn’t live past 65. I suspect that’ll be a record for a while longer, given the average life expectancy and the scale of losses on the Ukrainian front.
The comparative death rates between Russia and the US have literally nothing to do with the facts under discussion, which is whether a given 65 year old person’s death should be done considered because of a population - level statistical characteristic. What are you on about?
Nothing that you observed does anything but reinforce the point that expected-time-of-remaining life on a cohort basis including wealth and privilege is the only way to make an accurate judgement as to the expectations involved in a given death.
Exactly. Remove Russian and it’s “61 year old man died of heart attack during work trip”.
Also, Putin generally doesn’t want any question that the person was murdered e.g. fall from window, poison, plane exploding, etc.
Now, it’s possible that this was a more discreet operation, or another agency e.g. Ukrainian SBU, but again, “older man dies of heart attack” isn’t exactly unusual.
I didn’t even look him up, but I’m sure he did, as he’s a Russian diplomat.
My point is that in this case, with the information that’s available, the most likely cause of death is natural.
If additional information comes out, maybe that changes, but a 61 year old man in a high stress job, dying of a heart attack is not suspicious.
Putin assassinating people with this much ambiguity around cause of death, is uncommon.
Ukraine killing people with this much ambiguity would be more believable, but again, we’d need more information to become available for that to make more sense than natural causes.
While assassinations aren’t exactly rare in Russia, I do find it slightly funny when people immediately suspect foul play when old men in stressful jobs die in Russia. Especially in a country renowned for the prevalence of alcoholism.
I mean, the average male life expectancy is under 65 in Russia. This guy didn’t even die particularly prematurely by Russian standards. And it’s not as if he looks like the picture of health in the picture attached to the article.
Well, you have to factor the guy’ s class into it, not just his age.
The problem with the “avg age at time of death” is that it picks up thinks like infant mortality (1.7% in 2002 and 2.9% in 1979). You also have to look at the contribution of wealth and class.
Even there, the better metric for a person might be “expected years of life remaining.” Since someone who is 65 didn’t die in infancy and wasn’t killed as a teen, all of those factors (which drag life expectancy down) can be ignored. If you’re still talking populations and cohorts, you’re still factoring in things like poverty and access to healthcare, but it might give a better understanding of the statistical probability of a person to die of natural causes in a hotel at that age.
Russia has a lower infant mortality than the US. Free healthcare. If anything, that lower infant mortality rate would lead you to expect a higher life expectancy than the US.
Although it’s changing, the thing that drags down life expectancy in Russia really is alcoholism. Especially with older generations of men who drink like goldfish:
Apparently, because younger people drink significantly less, life expectancy rose to 68 in 2018. Not too long ago, most Russian men didn’t live past 65. I suspect that’ll be a record for a while longer, given the average life expectancy and the scale of losses on the Ukrainian front.
The comparative death rates between Russia and the US have literally nothing to do with the facts under discussion, which is whether a given 65 year old person’s death should be done considered because of a population - level statistical characteristic. What are you on about?
Nothing that you observed does anything but reinforce the point that expected-time-of-remaining life on a cohort basis including wealth and privilege is the only way to make an accurate judgement as to the expectations involved in a given death.
Exactly. Remove Russian and it’s “61 year old man died of heart attack during work trip”.
Also, Putin generally doesn’t want any question that the person was murdered e.g. fall from window, poison, plane exploding, etc.
Now, it’s possible that this was a more discreet operation, or another agency e.g. Ukrainian SBU, but again, “older man dies of heart attack” isn’t exactly unusual.
I wonder if he has done anything publicly that would put him in someone’s crosshairs?
I didn’t even look him up, but I’m sure he did, as he’s a Russian diplomat.
My point is that in this case, with the information that’s available, the most likely cause of death is natural.
If additional information comes out, maybe that changes, but a 61 year old man in a high stress job, dying of a heart attack is not suspicious.
Putin assassinating people with this much ambiguity around cause of death, is uncommon.
Ukraine killing people with this much ambiguity would be more believable, but again, we’d need more information to become available for that to make more sense than natural causes.
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The average life expectancy for men in my USA community is 64, women 56.