How Covid’s Toll Compares With Other Causes of Death

Interesting piece via Kaiser Health News: 

Now that the coronavirus has been in the United States for roughly a year, new numbers are revealing the scale of Covid-19’s impact on American health: Covid has become the country’s third-leading cause of death, and could be on its way to outpacing cancer. 

As of Wednesday afternoon, 528,603 Americans had died of the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University data. And a closely watched model from researchers at the University of Washington projects that this number will rise past 575,000 by June 1. 

“The toll of death is simply staggering -- worse than I would have predicted,” said Arthur Caplan, founding head of the division of medical ethics at the New York University School of Medicine. “Covid has been nothing short of the worst failure of public policy in modern memory.”

With a year’s worth of data, it’s possible to look more precisely at how the coronavirus compares with the more routine causes of death in the U.S. 

The chart below compares the coronavirus death figure (in red) over the past year or so, with the 10 leading causes of death in 2019, the last year for which full data is available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The takeaway is that the coronavirus killed more Americans in the past year than any cause of death in 2019, other than heart disease and cancer. And if the University of Washington model proves accurate, then by June, the 15-month toll from the coronavirus will be close to matching the annual number of deaths from cancer. 

All other causes of death pale in comparison to the coronavirus death toll. So far, the coronavirus has killed roughly three times as many people as accidents, lung ailments, stroke or Alzheimer’s disease did in 2019. And the coronavirus has outpaced the number of deaths from diabetes, kidney disease, pneumonia and suicide by even larger multiples.

Caution is warranted when comparing these causes of death. Most of the 10 leading causes of death are not primarily driven by infections, whereas the coronavirus is. So it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which any of the other causes could spike the way coronavirus did.

Keep read HERE.