Addressing the presidential age problem

 Dhruv Khullar, New Yorker -  Perhaps the most accurate thing that can be said about aging is that it is a vastly heterogeneous process. Some people enter their later years and suffer a swift decline; some people stay sharp until the day they die. And yet it’s also true that for most conditions age is not a risk factor but the risk factor. An octogenarian in excellent health is more likely to have a heart attack than a sedentary thirtysomething chain-smoker is. Your risk of stroke doubles every decade after the age of fifty-five. The average eighty-four-year-old man has a ten-per-cent chance of dying next year. Averages are averages, though, and a person who assumes the Presidency is anything but average. Biden has access to world-class medical care; he works out regularly; he doesn’t drink or smoke. His father died at eighty-six, and his mother lived into her nineties, in reasonably good health until the end. Some longevity researchers, having pored over publicly available medical information about Biden and Trump, have deemed both men “super-agers.” Still, time inflicts insults in myriad ways, both small and—increasingly over the years—large.