Those estimates of years of life lost to COVID
COVID news has become so politicized that it’s even harder than usual to sort out the wheat from the chaff. But I’ll try.
The latest news is that the estimate of potential life lost from COVID in the US so far is about 2.5 million years:
Elledge essentially quantified the absence left behind by COVID-19 and drew his results from data on life expectancy and mortality from the Social Security Administration and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Findings were posted this week in medRxiv ahead of peer review.
“This is an astounding cost and surprising given the apparent public misperception that COVID-19 is a disease that disproportionately impacts the elderly and is somehow of less concern to the rest of society,” Elledge wrote.
I don’t see what’s “astounding” about any of it. Obviously, some young people have died and their life expectancies are high. And even people of 70 or more have average life expectancies that are more than zero. So if you have about 220K deaths, you’re going to have millions of years of life lost.
What’s more, of course, we have a case of at least partial “garbage in, garbage out” having to do with how COVID deaths are counted. If you look at the CDC charts, you’ll see that COVID deaths are defined as deaths involving COVID. We have no real idea of how many of those deaths were really from COVID as opposed to with COVID, but it’s almost certainly not all of them.
Way down at the bottom of the NY Post article you also have this caveat:
However, there are possible sources of error in the data. For example, life expectancies vary across ethnicities in the US population and this factor was not fully accounted for in the analysis.
Lacking statistics on comorbidities also create a source of error in the data. Health issues like obesity, chronic kidney disease and diabetes can result in shorter life expectancies and since the analysis could not fully take this into account, some of the calculations may be “artificially increased.”
That makes perfect sense. But these statistics will be used to scare people – for political purposes – anyway. Now we can blame Trump not just for 200K+ dead people, but for millions of productive years gone!
Here’s some perspective from the past – specifically, the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, when Obama was president and Biden vice president:
By applying the age-group mortality data from the European study to the estimated deaths, the researchers calculate that the pandemic took a toll [in the US] of between 334,000 and 1,973,000 years of life lost (YLL).
I don’t recall hearing much about that. Do you? And from the same article, more history (the figures apply to the US):
–The 1968 pandemic, with 86,000 deaths and victims averaging 62.2 years old, caused 1,693,000 YLL.
–The 1957 pandemic, with 150,600 deaths and a mean age of 64.6, caused 2,698,000 YLL.
–The 1918 pandemic, with an estimated 1,272,300 deaths and a mean age of only 27.2, exacted a toll of 63,718,000 YLL.
–An average flu season dominated by influenza A/H3N2—which generally causes more severe epidemics than other strains—causes 47,800 deaths and 594,000 YLL, with a mean age of 75.7.
So there you have it – and of course, all of it is estimates. Not only that, but those years of life lost are among smaller US populations than now, so they had greater impact.
And I will add that, but for COVID and its politicization, I believe that Trump would be winning this election easily. Now, with COVID, I just don’t know. But I do know that the opposition has made the propagandist most of the tragedies resulting from this pandemic.
Every set of data has been entirely corrupted on this issue.
The big three of cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all flawed in various ways and then used to further deny freedoms to the citizenry. And not only are they flawed but they are selectively used. Cases going down then it’s hospitalizations, hospitalizations going down then it’s deaths that matter.
Now we are back to ‘cases, cases, cases’ again.
The problem is that it’s been politicized from day 1:
https://twitter.com/joshdcaplan/status/1320022088330117122
Now, one might think that a pandemic of epic proportions might not be something to be exploited uncompromisingly as a political issue by either international organizations or the Democratic party….
Lacking statistics on comorbidities is a huge flaw. Since it is well known that health issues such as obesity, kidney disease and diabetes not only make a person with COVID more likely to die, they also tend to shorten the lives of individuals without COVID. In my opinion not taking that into account makes this study worthless.
“Now we are back to ‘cases, cases, cases’ again.”
Over the last few weeks as “cases” have continued to climb, I began to get a bit suspicious about data manipulation, but the data was “behaving” (that’s a term I use from 40+ years as an experimental physicist). Well, this morning it was reported on worldometers that the new active cases increased in one day by 41,500. This was the largest single day jump since the beginning way back on March 1. That immediately set off my alarm bells. Data on natural phenomenon do not exhibit such anomalous (meaning 3-4 sigma) swings in one data point. Whenever that happens one must immediately assume something “fishy”. In my lab it was usually a malfunctioning sensor, or an undergrad mistake. In this case for COVID, where I must rely on reported data, I can only conclude someone screwed up, or given the politicization of the the virus, an attempt to scare everyone, and thus fraudulent.
physicsguy,
There is a data guy on twitter called ‘TheEthicalSkeptic’ who does a lot of next level data analysis of which some I get and some is above my head but he calls what you are describing ‘Shopcraft’.
And yes the swings in data in states and counties swing wildly because of ‘data dumps’. In Alabama yesterday they dumped 4,000 antigen tests in one day and that led to them having there biggest day yet but it was phony. In my county I suspect the same is going on to some degree. We will have 50, 60, 70 new cases a day then suddenly 125 then back to 70 the next day. That stinks to high heaven.
What a disaster this whole thing is.
Also, for example, today in my county of about 900,000 people they are saying that in the last 2 weeks 38.4% of new cases are between 20-39 and 16% are 19 and under. So over half of new cases are in people who statistically have virtually no chance of death or even serious health issues. That should be great news but that is not how they report it.
Just reporting the ‘cases’ is incredibly meaningless without far more information.
Another problem with the data is bizarre inconsistent reporting. Florida is notorious for having dozens if not hundreds of labs having days where they report nothing but positive cases which warps the positivity rate obviously.
Then yesterday which is reported today a Saturday a couple hundred labs reported virtually all negative tests. Conveniently on a weekend when the reports get less attention.
This shouldn’t matter that much because it all evens out in the end but unfortunately this data is being used to dictate our lives in many places.
Here in MA the average age of death from Covid is 82 but the mean life expectancy is 80. With 10,000 Covid deaths that means we have 20,000 years of life gained! While the fancy and very expensive inns and spas in the Berkshires are normally closed for the winter, this year they will be opening after the New Year and offering special treatments by highly trained doctors to exploit this new found resource. They will naturally also be providing their usual hot yoga classes, massages, and gourmet food to their guests while they stay in luxurious surroundings and recover from treatment. Cross country skiing, snowshoeing, and other outdoor activities will of course be provided for our guests.
2.5 million years lost for 340 million population is about 1/150th of a year per person. That’s about 2.5 days per person. Why is that in any way significant?
Cases include a combination of past, probable, possible, and present.
In Washington, the Seattle Times will breathlessly announce “797 new cases today!!!” but if you go to the state’s dashboard, it’s 300 new cases actually dated today, 100 dated yesterday, 100 dated the 3 days before that, 100 the week before that, and the rest scattered over the last several months. The same with fatalities.
So the state is being honest and the media isn’t. At least we have one of the two.
This is not a scientific rebuttal to the analysis, but one doctor interviewed said that eighty percent of the COVID-19 deaths he had seen were in patients that would have died before the end of the year due to their other co-morbidities.
Whereas 2.5 million years would represent an average of greater than ten additional years for each COVID-19 death.
Obviously, both of these cannot be true at once.
}}} And even people of 70 or more have average life expectancies that are more than zero
Actually, this is less than you’d think, Neo.
1) 50% of all USA CV deaths are 75+
(75% are 65+, 90% are 55+) — but focus on that.
2) Life expectancy in the USA is 75-82, depending on the state. But most states are 75-77.
Life expectancy is defined statistically as the mean number of years remaining for an individual or a group of people at a given age.
(There are arguments that say the “LE” of someone 75 right now is 12… but… wait, they’re saying that an infant NOW can expect to live a shorter life than someone 75 now? This is ridiculous — but note that it explains the loss-of-life figure you cite)
So, pretty much half the people dying from CV are half the people one expects to die at 75, or damned close.
CV is just “the bullet that got you”, in this context.
The only REAL important count would be measured far far better by “excess deaths”… we have enough data to know how many people would be expected to die from each non-CV cause in the USA population. How many MORE people are dying this year as opposed to other years?
THAT is the actual CV death rate that matters. Even for suicides, as, those can be driven very much by lockdowns.
Paul in Boston wrote: “Here in MA the average age of death from Covid is 82 but the mean life expectancy is 80.” I noticed that in several states. I think it’s a simple and reassuring piece of data that can be helpful to people having trouble digesting the scary data dumps from the corrupt media. But I have been having trouble finding that information for the U.S. as a whole. Anybody know?
I would like to see the stats on how many nursing home deaths were from natural causes in 2020. If they are ridiculously low compared to recent years we’ll know the figures on Covid are very suspect.
The experts vs ymar. Ymar does not lose.