Fifteen cigarettes a day

In 2023 the Surgeon General of the United States published an advisory on loneliness. The line that traveled was that being cut off from other people raises your risk of early death about as much as smoking up to fifteen cigarettes a day.

When I read that, I thought about the first nursing home I ever walked through, and the silence I was not prepared for. I doubt anyone in that building would have called that silence a health problem. It was how the afternoon went.

The comparison is rough, and it does not count who actually dies of loneliness. I still think it matters, because it changes who has to care. A resident who smoked a pack a day would get a plan. How many care plans say when someone last had a real conversation?

Piotr Kierner