Heart Disease Is The Biggest Killer In US

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 25, 10:25AM EST

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Heart Disease Is The Biggest Killer In US — © patrickheagney / Getty Images

The COVID-19 pandemic has killed as many as 1.1 million Americans, making it one of the leading causes of death each year. COVID-19 deaths are not close to the leading cause of death at all. Heart disease kills many more people.
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According to CDC data, the death rate from heart disease per 100,000 people was 173 in 2021. That was followed by cancer at 146. Covid-19 ranked third at 104. In a distant fourth place, unintentional accidents were 64 per 100,000.

Heart disease kills so many people because it has so many causes. Most of these are caused by the American lifestyle. A third of Americans are obese. Millions of Americans have Type 2 Diabetes, caused by poor health habits, untreated cholesterol, untreated high blood pressure, and lack of exercise.

Heart disease is to some extent a matter of poor choices, which makes it unique among the major causes of death.

Time to set some New Year Resolutions for a healthier, happier life.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.