I'm Constantly Going to Funerals Lately

ArcadiaJunction

I can't beleive the numbers of people I know who have died in the last year and especially since the summer. All age groups and cancers all over the place. You have wonder if Putin has dropped a weapon on us to do it. It is really is astounding the numbers just dying now.

zell12

Hi Joe!

yagan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058373814/im-constantly-going-to-funerals-lately

I don't know what age you are but when you get to a certain stage RIP.IE is the new social media.

For what it's worth an undertaker friend told me that he now has a keep a good stock of coffins for obese customers, who generally die a lot younger than their non obese cohorts.

Can't talk about though or we'll be called fat shamers.

L1011

You're getting old.

Cluedo Monopoly

Its the crap food and pollution (food sources, air, water etc). Processed food is killing us and nobody really talking about it

28064212

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122707974#Comment_122707974

Ah yes, we should go back to the 50s where none of that stuff existed.

Of course average life expectancy back then was around 65 years, compared to the current value of 82.

Average life expectancy has increased every year for the past 54 years.

It goes like this, invite to debs next its wedding invitations then baby naming christening things, then anniversaries, but as time goes along it's more and more funeral your going to its the way of life.

who what when

High rates of infant mortality really drove down average life expectancy years ago.

There's an epidemic of chronic illness due to the 'modern lifestyle' on the horizon and nobody is talking about it!

Esel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122707963#Comment_122707963

My father used to say:

"You see plenty of fat men and plenty of old men, but you don't see plenty of fat old men. "

banie01

My 1st wife died suddenly at 26, granted it was 2007 and long before peak anti-vax but, Putin was in power!

Was it him all along 🤨

My 2nd wife was diagnosed with cancer in 2022 and my 35y.o brother dropped dead in 2023 and sure my own health has been fúcked since 2012 are you telling me that it was Putin all along?

Rather than a preponderance of risk factors and falling victim to having an epic youth?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708199#Comment_122708199

Crikey Banie, I'm very sorry to read it. It's an awful lot of tragedy.

Why are people saying we can't or don't talk about obesity and other unhealthy lifestyles? People talk about these all the time.

2024 has been a bizarrely tragic year going by my observations too. It's not "getting old" - these are people who have become ill/died far too early. My parents are 77 and 78 - even they say this year has been freakish. Among people I know of, there have been deaths from accidents, suicides, a cancer death very soon after diagnosis, a sudden death due to an underlying heart condition, an aggressive cancer diagnosis (thankfully she's doing better now but it was scary) and heart trouble becoming near death (thankfully he got a transplant). The oldest who died was 62 (cancer) and the youngest: 28 (car accident). 🥺

banie01

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708219#Comment_122708219

Thank you, I appreciate the sentiment I really do. All the losses provided in my post are true but, it's also a little effort at reductio and absurdum on my part. The OPs logic is absurd and my response to it is an effort to be too.

In real terms the death rate in Ireland is in its normal range. Whereas life expectancy averages used to be thrown off by high infant mortality as well as old age. We now live in one of the lowest infant mortality rate countries in the world. So with very few infants & young people dying? The 1st encounter many have with death outside their immediate family is the contemporary aged person who falls victim to damned statistics.

When you hit your 40s? There will be a spike in the number of deaths and serious illnesses affecting people our age. The OP is ascribing that to Putin's nefarious actions, it's bollox.

yagan

On the life expectancy thing if I remember rightly those born between the 30s and 70s benefitted most from the green revolution and vaccines.

However in the US bad diet and drug overuse is starting to drive down life expectancy again.

When my mum was fading away in the nursing home the head nurse said her generation are physically tough from cycling to school and work, whereas those in the decades after who got used to the car aren't as resilient to illness and tend to die younger and quicker.

I think it's inevitable that we'll see a peak in life expectancy here before a drop too.

dxhound2005

I hope the medical profession, dieticians and statisticians are reading this thread. So much good information they never knew about.

Gary_dunne

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708265#Comment_122708265

It's been a bizarrely tragic year for you personally, not an outlier by any statistics so far.

I can turn around and say it has been a year completely free of any tragic deaths or health issues going by my observations which balances yours out.

We're back to this year not being an outlier at all, just unfortunately a bad one for you and the people you know.

CliffHangeroner

Putin is an arsehole but the media have done a serious job on people's minds about Russia at this stage. I'm just waiting for him to be blamed on 9/11 next or maybe even the crusades.

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708353#Comment_122708353

From the Presbyterian Outlook May 2022.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is more than political, it’s a religious crusade. As U.S. intelligence officials try to understand Vladimir Putin’s mindset, they would do well to take seriously his language around the “sacredness” of the Ukrainian territory for Russia. He is older, isolated, and thinking about his legacy. He wants to be eternally revered by the people of Russia, and he sees this crusade into Ukraine as his way to rebuild the historic Russian Empire.

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708010#Comment_122708010

It's not really about your lifespan.

The important metric is your health span.

Many people live well into their 80s with many years of poor health.

artanevilla

The older you get the more people you know and statistically the more people will die, it's an absolute certainty.

Mrs OBumble

And of course there's a new multi-systemic virus in the human population now, too, which we didn't have 5 years ago.

it will take a few years for the epidemiologists to really get a handle of how incremental damage from multiple infections is - or isn't - affecting the population overall.

But I'm aware of a few employers who are tracking higher sick leave rates now.

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708443#Comment_122708443

How did you find out about those employers? It sounds like the sort of data that should not be shared with anyone outside their HR.

banie01

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708479#Comment_122708479

Quite common for organisations to share anonymized attendance and sick rate data. In particular MNC and large employers would subscribe to data feeds and HR journals that gather and share such data to allow for accurate basis for work force planning and so on.

Gary_dunne

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708479#Comment_122708479

They didn't just some anecdotal nonsense.

Even if it were true, taking sick days is encouraged more in this day and age, whether it's a mental health day or just office culture that you don't go in when you're not feeling well spreading your cold around the office.

JupiterKid

It's been a very bad year of loss for me too. My dear older sister died suddenly aged only 54 at the end of June, my partner lost his cousin aged 62 in February and I can count 12 deaths of wider friends of the family - granted most of these were old age. Both my own parents are now gone a long time - but many of my childhood friends are now losing their parents. We are now all middle-aged (I'm 49) , and the parents are pretty much now all close to or at the end of their lives.

2024 is a year my partner and I want to see the back of due to the personal losses.

Yes, as you get older, more and more funerals happen.

yagan

When you bury your last parent you walk away from the grave knowing you're now on the front line.

Patrick2010

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058373814/im-constantly-going-to-funerals-lately

Hope you don't know me

Viscount Aggro

Was at a funeral the other day... Standing outside the church... Some prick asked me ... "Was it anything serious?"

KaneToad

As my father would say, "there's people dying today that never died before".

His other funerial quip is about how he'd like to be buried, it's a bit more coarse than the one above, suffice to say the quip involves the name Bibi Baskin.

thereiver

When you are over 50 ,if you have alot of friends people will start dying of various illness,s , of cancer or other disease,s ,your parents will die.your friends parents will die.

this meme is relevant

https://www.thefader.com/2024/08/21/nobody-will-remember-your-workplace-burnout

maybe gen z will live a few years longer they use less drugs on average drink less maybe cos they have to pay a ridiculous proprtion of their wages in rent.And they are more health conscious.

theres an advantage to just having a small circle of friends

Strumms

if you ever look at rip.ie, it’s always quite sobering to see how many younger people that are dying.

My parents who are at a reasonably advanced age could between them go to a funeral a month but when I’m looking up mass and removal times for them the number of teens and people too 18-50 who are dying. Sobering…cancer and sudden deaths, heart attacks, brain aneurysms or other neurological conditions. According to the WHO incidences Parkinson’s disease and dementia and strokes have almost doubled over the last 30 years. Real increase in neuro issues / conditions.

Celmullet

I had a two-year period of this back in 2013-15, everyone was dropping like flies. It felt like I was at a funeral every other week. It calmed down since then. Deaths do seem to come in waves.

SwissToni

Excess death rate in Ireland is well above average.

Gary_dunne

Think this thread needs to be moved towards conspiracy theories forum.

28064212

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122709295#Comment_122709295

A combination of (a) the increase in the absolute number of the population, and (b) the increase in the average age of that population.

The table you've quoted compares the total number of deaths of two time periods e.g. in March 2023 there were 9.2% more deaths than than the average number of deaths in March from 2016-2019 - so if the average number of deaths in March 2016-2019 was 1,000, then the number of deaths in March 2023 was 1,092. But that doesn't take into account that there were more people in Ireland in March 2023 - our population is growing. There are simply more people in the country, you would expect more deaths.

But population increase alone doesn't account for a 9.2% increase, which brings me to my next point: that population is also, on average, older. In 2016, people over 65 accounted for 13.3% of the population. In 2023, it was 15.3%. 83% of all deaths comes from the over-65 age group. As that group continues to make up a larger proportion of the population, total mortality figures will continue to increase.

An increase in excess mortality is expected if your population is growing or getting older. Ours is doing both. The total number of deaths was projected to increase from around 30,000 in 2017 to around 38,500 in 2030 (based off the 2016 census, the projection based off the last census hasn't been released yet)

Sources:

[1] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/fp/fp-mpds/measuringmortalityusingpublicdatasources2019-2023october2019-june2023/

[2] https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-mip/measuringirelandsprogress2022/society/

(and if anyone gets a sense of déjà vu, yes, I did make the exact same post in response to the exact same chart last month)

Caquas

There is a long-standing weakness in Irish mortality statistics. It will be almost 6 months before anyone can give a definitive answer to the OP (by which time we may be in the midst of a new pandemic 🤧 or Putin will have dropped that weapon 🤯)

The CSO was badly caught during the COVID pandemic - their stats were so out-dated they were no use to those deciding on lockdowns etc. . It takes doctors up to three months to register a death here (much longer if the Coroner is involved). The latest statistics on deaths in Ireland covers the first quarter of 2024 and was published at the end of August i.e. 8 months after the earliest deaths.

In 2020, when Eurostat began tracking the pandemic, they told the CSO to get their finger out. The result was a series of statistics tracking notices in RIP.ie. Yeah, if you die in Ireland, your death will not be counted for many months unless someone happens to stick a notice on a commercial website.

Here is the long explanation.

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/fp/fp-mpds/measuringmortalityusingpublicdatasources2019-2023october2019-june2023/

Deaths in Ireland decreased by 6.3% compared to the same period in 2023. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-vs/vitalstatisticsfirstquarter2024/

thereiver

the cycle of life birth marriage death ,

most people get married before they are 35 or never get married at all .

to some extent life is predictable a series of fairly predictable stages

TinyMuffin

free grub. A few pints.

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122710241#Comment_122710241

And a chance to meet your local TD's.

Mannesmann

Maybe it's the after effects of the Covid pandemic. I mean everyone has had it by now and it may have done some long term damage to those who seemed to have got over it and is now showing up as heart failures etc.

ottolwinner

the fall of a dry leaf is a warning to the green ones.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122707974#Comment_122707974

If that was the case the Americans would have been wiped out by now.

Jinglejangle69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708265#Comment_122708265

The world has just become more adventurous, more options to travel, more everything since when our parents where young.

Nobody would have even thought traveling the world or going to Oz for a year was possible 40 years ago.

A car was a luxury. Take aways were once a year.

It all adds up.

thereiver

I know at least 5 people who never had COVID .it sounds like you are over 40 and have loads of friends who are older than you .

Mrs OBumble

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122710664#Comment_122710664

Ahh, travel was a lot more adventurous pre Internet than it is now.

Nobody would have even thought traveling the world or going to Oz for a year was possible 40 years ago.

The number of Irish people in Oz/NZ 40+ years ago suggests otherwise.

And young people from that side of the world were certainly coming to the UK for "the big OE" too.

ottolwinner

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122710696#Comment_122710696

I never had it either, don’t know anyone personally who hasn’t had it though.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708273#Comment_122708273

Oh I'm not even acknowledging the comment about Putin. 😊

And yes, I'm not claiming that there's a sudden pattern emerging - just that late 2023 up to weeks ago, there has been an unusually high number of deaths and terrible diagnoses among people who are/were young or nowhere near old. My own observations and those of others I know, and it has been unusual. Some loved ones of people close to me, some loved ones of people who are just acquaintances. I'm lucky that none affected me personally. This was never the case until the last ten months or so though, and I don't expect it to continue at that rate. I disagree that people start dying or getting seriously ill in such high numbers at such young ages. Certainly our 40s brings with it the deaths of parents. I didn't include my dad's friend dying recently at 79, or my friends' parents, in their 80s, having to go into care homes in recent years due to dementia - because that's awfully sad and difficult, but is unfortunately normal. However there were deaths and serious illnesses of far more young and middle aged people than elderly people, from what I personally observed, in 2024. I agree though: not the same for everyone.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708341#Comment_122708341

Oh I know. Just sharing with the OP that I've seen a similar situation, but not agreeing with the Putin thing 😊 or claiming that this is widespread for everyone. I think it has just been a freak year for some (and that's no doubt always been the case for individuals). I feel blessed that none of those tragedies affected me personally - some just acquaintances, but some people I'm close to (best friends, sister-in-law) and my heart is broken for them. Emotionally of course your worldview will be skewed.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708726#Comment_122708726

Very sorry to read about your sis, JK.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122708425#Comment_122708425

For sure, but not young/relatively young people in high numbers, and all of a sudden.

Not directed at you but some are saying "you're getting old", which is a little facetious imo. No I doubt people in their 70s are on Boards!

Jinglejangle69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122710711#Comment_122710711

Then I’ve no explanation😂