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by refulgentis 734 days ago
My priors would go the opposite way: a full-body checkup cannot clear out the plaque in my arteries, lower my blood pressure, strength my vascular walls, and there's no miracle drugs that definitively address those. I think of a checkup that says "good to go, won't die in the next year!" is more like an auto checkup, where we do diagnostics then can take definitive action.

That being said saying odds are one of them dies before the election is uncomfortably high isn't something I'd subscribe to. Quick check here, using N=age-google-told-me and N+1, gets 1 in 18 and 1 in 13, 6% and 8%. If they were 60 it'd be 1%, 70, 2%.

https://www.candidmoney.com/calculators/death-probability-ca...

2 comments

Actuarial tables tell you basically nothing about a specific individual. For that you would want to look at some personal. Like, say, a full body checkup.
Yeah thats a good point, I agree, a full body checkup tells us stuff about an individual, but it doesn't heal them (or at length: meaningfully rule out, or affect, odds of dying in the next year)
Apparently [1], Biden at least has "controlled" cholesterol, a normal EKG, some asymptomatic and controlled fibrillation. The number of experts who consult the guy every year is actually impressive.

The usual 70-year-old is probably a risky bet, but surely 10 specialists plus a team of generalists would make a more predictive yearly checkup. I think he's going to lose through normal politics and not by way of a heart attack.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Health...