The most “powerful nation in the history of the world” may be very good at funding wars abroad but it’s less adept at looking after its own citizens. US life expectancy has declined dramatically in recent years: it’s now the shortest it’s been in nearly two decades. It’s particularly bad if you’re male: new research by Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and UC San Francisco has found that women in the US now outlive men by almost six years. The life expectancy gap between men and women has been widening since 2010 and is now the largest it’s been since 1996.

What’s causing this? If you asked the likes of Josh Hawley he’d probably point fingers at feminism or porn. The real answer, however, is the pandemic (men are more likely to die of Covid) and so-called “deaths of despair”: an increase in deaths from things like suicide, drugs and alcohol abuse.