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Explainers | VitaMins

The Risk of Living Longer: What if new senolytic drugs fulfil their potential?

People have a natural tendency to underestimate life expectancy and actuaries traditionally base future projections on extrapolations of observed historical experience; this can result in institutional blind spots to extreme future longevity events. But what would happen if one of these overlooked scenarios occurred?

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All News and insights

All the latest information, news and research from the Club Vita team.

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Opinion & experiences | Mega Trends

Mega Trend 7: wearable tech drives life expectancy increases

In our seventh mega trend blog, Conor O’Reilly explores how advances in wearable technology could lead to further increases in life expectancy in the future.

3 August 2021

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 21-07: World records, 100m sprint vs life expectancy

Inspired by the start of the Tokyo Olympic games, in this edition of Top Charts Nick Chadwick and Erik Pickett compare the progression of world records for the 100m sprint and for life expectancy at birth.

23 July 2021

Opinion & experiences | Mega Trends

Mega Trend 6: healthy life expectancy will increase at a quicker pace than life expectancy

In our sixth mega trend blog, France Panneton discusses whether the quality over quantity argument will influence the push to increase healthy life expectancy more rapidly than total lifespan.

9 July 2021

Opinion & experiences | Mega Trends

Mega Trend 5: Longevity risk will (is already) moving back to institutions from individuals

In our fifth mega trend blog, Jennifer Haid discusses longevity risks moving back to institutions from individuals.

29 June 2021

Opinion & experiences | Mega Trends

Mega Trend 4: pension funds and insurers include longevity impact in climate risk management

In our fourth mega trend blog, Mark Sharkey discusses pension funds and insurers including longevity impact in climate risk management.

22 June 2021

General interest | VitaMins

VitaMins Health: COVID-19 and cancer – prevention on pause?

In the latest edition of VitaMins Health we look at delays in cancer treatments and screenings due to the pandemic and the potential effects on longevity.

17 June 2021

Opinion & experiences | Mega Trends

Mega Trend 3: Pension schemes start treating longevity as a risk to manage rather than an assumption to get ‘right’

Read our third mega trend blog where Erik Pickett discusses the relationship between pension schemes, longevity and risk.

11 June 2021

Opinion & experiences | Mega Trends

Mega Trends 2: Longevity becomes a tradeable commodity

Read our second mega trend blog where Nick Chadwick discusses longevity becoming a tradeable commodity.

1 June 2021

Opinion & experiences | Mega Trends

Mega Trend 1: UK longevity inequality will grow

Read our first mega trend blog where Douglas Anderson discusses UK longevity inequality.

24 May 2021

Opinion & experiences | Behavioural economics blogs

Choice overload – the paradox of too much choice

Would you like a piece of cake? Would you prefer carrot cake or tiramisu? Or would you prefer cheesecake? Or fruit cake? Or chocolate cake? Or red velvet cake, Boston cream pie, Battenburg, Black Forest gateau, lingonkaka, pineapple upside-down cake? Or maybe a flourless chocolate torte?

18 May 2021

Explainers | Pandemic updates

COVID-19: The latest picture as a 10th March 2021

In this week’s update on emerging COVID-19 data, there are additional encouraging signs as both overall and COVID-19 deaths have fallen once again.

11 March 2021

Explainers | Expert response

VitaMins: The CMI_2020 Mortality Projections Model

The CMI have released the latest version of their mortality projections model, which includes England & Wales population data up to 2020.

9 March 2021

Research & technical | Research & technical notes

COVID-19 longevity scenarios: a bump in the road or a catalyst for change?

A bump in the road or a catalyst for change?

3 March 2021

Opinion & experiences | Behavioural economics blogs

The Narrative Effect – the power of a good story

The narrative effect is the reliance on a connecting story to interpret a series of events. It is a very powerful effect both in business and pleasure, but is not without it's pitfalls!

3 March 2021

Explainers | Pandemic updates

COVID-19 The latest picture as at 24th February 2021

In this week’s update on emerging COVID-19 data, there are further encouraging signs as COVID-19 deaths have fallen by around 22%, although they remain at a high level.

24 February 2021

Explainers | Pandemic updates

COVID-19: The latest picture as at 28th January 2021

In the latest weekly update on emerging COVID-19 data, Conor finds that a rise in COVID-19 deaths has offset a broadly equivalent fall in non COVID-19 linked deaths in the latest week, resulting in similar numbers of death registrations to last week.

29 January 2021

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 21-10: Excess deaths in England & Wales: 2020 compared to history

In this edition of Top Charts, Chuyi Yang looks at excess deaths in England & Wales and compares the extreme experience in 2020 to previous years back to 1900.

28 January 2021

General interest | VitaMins

VitaMins: Life on pause

Late in 2020, Conor and Steven wrote an article on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on broader medical services in the UK that was included in the Longevity Bulletin on COVID-19 published by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. The key points are summarised here, but we recommend reading the full article for further details (as well as the other articles).

8 January 2021

Opinion & experiences | Personal blogs

Reasons to be cheerful

A Scotsman on Hogmanay morning should be planning the New Year party. Not this year. I’m holed up in my study soberly digesting the latest grim diet of COVID statistics, whilst escaping my children’s depression at the prospect of weeks more separation from their friends. We could all do with an injection of optimism: some reasons to be cheerful.

4 January 2021

Opinion & experiences | Behavioural economics blogs

Cognitive miserliness – I’m too busy to think about that!

In his latest blog, Erik Pickett looks at the concept of cognitive miserliness, which is the tendency to avoid (or reduce) mental effort when making decisions.

17 December 2020

General interest | VitaMins

VitaMins Health: Physical activity – are you sitting comfortably?

Sedentary lifestyles are on the rise. More and more people are sitting down on the commute, sitting down at work and sitting down for leisure.

8 December 2020

Explainers | Pandemic updates

COVID-19: The latest picture as at 24th November 2020

In the latest weekly update on emerging UK COVID-19 statistics, Conor finds that COVID-19 deaths have continued to rise steadily, resulting in total deaths in the most recent week being some 19% higher than the average. We also explore the latest figures for case numbers, hospital admissions and deaths, which show some potentially encouraging signs.

24 November 2020

Explainers | Pandemic updates

COVID-19: The latest picture as at 17th November 2020

In this week’s blog, we explore the latest data on weekly deaths in the UK. Total weekly deaths have unfortunately continued the steady rise seen over the past few weeks, driven by the resurgence of deaths which mention COVID-19 on the death certificate.

17 November 2020

Explainers | Pandemic updates

COVID-19: The latest picture as at 10th November 2020

England has now brought in national restrictions, while Wales and Northern Ireland may be coming to the end of their own nationwide restrictions, and Scotland retains its own tiered alert system.

10 November 2020

Explainers | Pandemic updates

COVID-19: Case-Watch as at 29th October 2020

This week, a number of areas have (or will soon) move to higher levels of England’s 3-tier lockdown system and Scotland has announced details of its own tiered approach coming into force next week.

30 October 2020

General interest | Top charts

Top Charts 20-10: COVID-19 compared to other leading causes of death

In this edition of Top Charts, Erik Pickett examines how the numbers of COVID-19 deaths compare to other leading causes of death in the UK, US and Canada.

30 October 2020

Explainers | Pandemic updates

COVID-19: The latest picture as at 27th October 2020

In the latest weekly update on emerging UK COVID-19 statistics, Conor finds that, whilst total deaths remain close to average levels, COVID-19 deaths have continued their recent upward trend.

27 October 2020

General interest | VitaMins

VitaMins: Representativeness of data

With most of the world still in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic, much attention is now focused on the development of a safe and effective vaccine. Never in our memories have clinical trials received so many column inches and the subject of representativeness of sample data is top of many minds.

6 October 2020

Explainers | Pandemic updates

COVID-19: The latest picture as at 29th September 2020

In the latest weekly update on emerging COVID-19 statistics in the UK, Conor looks at how weekly deaths are close to average seasonal levels, while COVID-19 deaths creep upwards.

29 September 2020

Explainers | Pandemic updates

COVID-19: Latest developments in cases at 25th September 2020

Following several weeks of local restrictions impacting more areas, this week saw the introduction of restrictions across the UK, including a 10pm curfew on our hospitality industry. The hope is that this will help slow and supress transmissions, including cluster events/super-spreaders.

25 September 2020