The writer lost me at the first line.
Amid the chaos governing the world, a generation that lived through the Cold War is still alive thanks to better awareness in the importance of preventive health.
Balderdash. My grandparents passed at an average age of 89 1/2. One was over 100. They ate well, worked hard, lived fairly simple lives, One smoked, another was exposed to second hand smoke, the others grew tobacco and were exposed to the 'gum' the plants exude. They lived in a time when automobiles had no air bags, no seat belts, steel dashboards, no antilock brakes, and bias ply tires, sans emissions controls, and it was not unusual to be out in a boat without a life jacket on, just one to toss if someone went over the side.
In fact, the ninnies of today would pale at the life they led, where a dust mask was a bandana tied across the face, and hearing protection was a wad of cotton stuffed in an ear, often disdained because it got in the way or was a pain to fool with. Where Lard, real butter (fresh churned), and homemade bread were the norm, eggs were for breakfast, not long from the hen, and meat was raised and smoked at home, with salt the primary preservative.
That was the cold war world I grew up in, not the relatively pampered existence of today that the writer seems to think was so widespread.
What they missed out on along with all that 'preventive medicine', were the dyes, the preservatives, the additives in processed food, the spectral array of electromagnetic transmissions the average person of today is surrounded by, and the headlines which said 'this or that is going to kill you--or not' a few times a year. They ate the apples from the orchard, tomatoes from the field, and caned their own vegetables from the garden.
They raised 4 children (each couple), and went to church every Sunday and on Holy Days, too.
Preventative medicine isn't necessarily found in a doctor's office, it is in the way you live.