US Mortality Data -- 2015 - 2020 -- Pretty Much Sums It Up -- April 25, 2022

Note: I often make simple arithmetic errors. Calculations should be double- or triple-checked. 

Link to JAMA here.  

The "average" mortality rate for US runs about 2.7 million to 2.8 million out of population of around 330 million = 2.8 / 330 = 0.85%.

In 2020, the rate jumped to about 3.36 million out of a population of 330 million = 1.0%.

From 2.8 million to 3.36 million, a jump of about 0.56 million, or a jump of about 20%. 

Deaths went from well less than 3 million deaths / year to well more than 3 million deaths / year.

Link here to Covid-19 overtakes number of US deaths from Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 (a two-year pandemic):

The Covid-19 pandemic has become the deadliest disease event in American history, with a death toll surpassing that of the 1918 Spanish flu.

The Spanish flu was previously the disease event that caused the biggest loss of life in the United States; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 675,000 Americans died during the 1918 pandemic, in waves of illness that stretched out over roughly two years in this country.

According to STAT’s Covid-19 Tracker, Covid deaths stand at more than 675,400.

And more:

Whether the Covid pandemic will qualify as the deadliest event in U.S. history is perhaps a question for Civil War historians. The long-accepted toll of the War Between the States was 620,000, which this pandemic has already surpassed. But in 2011, David Hacker, a historian at Binghamton University in New York State, published an article in the journal Civil War History arguing the true number of deaths in the Civil War was more likely around 750,000.

The heavy toll the pandemic has taken in the U.S. is due to the country’s inadequate response early on, said Markel. David Morens, a medical historian at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, agreed.

It would be interesting "had we done nothing -- absolutely nothing -- with regard to Covid-19" would things be any different now, April 25, 2022?

We will never know.

But a jump in deaths from one  year to the next year by 20% in the country with the best medical care and best (?) public health system in the world is not trivial. 

A 20% jump in the overall mortality rate. 

It's easy to disagree on the cause of death, but "death" is pretty well defined in the US.

It would be interesting to find the prognostications back in 2019 about the possible severity of this pandemic. I'm sure they can be found but I'm not interested enough to look.

The suicide statistics are very interesting:

• 2015 - 20210: a 1.5% jump; truly trivial despite everything we've heard.
  
• 2018 (highest of years reported above) - 2020: a decrease of 7.3%, which, to me, does not seem trivial.

The memes that have come out of the Covid-19 pandemic remind me much of critical race theory when it comes to an alternative history of the United States. I was under the impression that the suicide rate jumped significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic. So far, the numbers suggest, perhaps not.

There are so many other story lines. 

A lot of folks suggested that "elective" and preventive medicine was put on hold because of the pandemic. If so, death from chronic disease, like heart disease, should have increased remarkably. It didn't. The rate pretty much remained unchanged. Some of these chronic diseases resulted in more deaths than previous years but not by enough to catch my attention.

Likewise, deaths from cancer should have increased also. In fact, cancer deaths were less in 2020 compared to the previous three years. 

It is interesting that with all the attention paid to Covid-19 in the past two years, the most recent update regarding breast cancer does not mention affect of Covid-19 and treatment availability during 2020. Link here which tells me that not much changed with regard to breast cancer during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

And then look at this: deaths from chronic lower respiratory diseases (I assume a lot of these deaths were mis-diagnosed or diagnosed as Covid-19 deaths, but still):

• from a high of 155,000 to 151,637, a slight decrease, which, again, could have been offset by "mis-diagnosis, but highly unlikely given the nature of the disease

And finally: three examples of where attention to Covid-19 and lack of routine and elective medical / surgical care had a huge impact, most of which deaths were probably in the elderly who were unable to obtain routine medical care or kidney dialysis or transplants;

• diabetes,
• Alzheimer, and
• kidney disease

In the big scheme of things, it does not matter how each of us interprets these numbers, this is the data from which US public health policy will be made by research institutions and the federal government. 

But again, it would be interesting our discussions today if absolutely nothing had been done to try to stop this pandemic and we were seeing reports of a 20% jump in deaths, year-over-year. 

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Denmark

A reader from Denmark sent similar data from Denmark in an e-mail. It was transcribed so there may be minor errors, but I doubt it. I think the numbers are correct. 

The numbers from Denmark:

From worldometer:

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MRNA 

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Word of the Day

Sericulture.

From "agriculture" to "sericulture."

Absolutely fascinating. 

Wiki entry. 

One of the "classics" that always fascinated me was Silas Marner, George Eliot, her third novel, 1861. The novel is set in the early years of the 19th century. Silas Marner, a weaver, is a member of a small Calvinist congregation in Lantern Yard, a slum street in Northern England.

It is impossible to articulate how miserable the life of Silas Marner must have been. It explains why the infant he brought home was so momentous. It's also impossible to articulate how brilliant George Eliot was to have "discovered" this story.

Wiki entry. 

The weaving of silk was introduced to England by Flemish refugees in the 16th century and was greatly developed after 1685 when the Huguenots from France established themselves at Spitalfields in London.

Some suggest Sudbury, Suffolk, was the home of British silk weaving. 

In Britain, sericulture probably became "a thing" with King James I (c. 1600; near the end of Shakespeare's writing).