Covid-19 deaths to reverse US life expectancy gains

The main factors were lower mortality rates from heart disease and cancer. 1 and no. Two causes of death, respectively, said Robert Anderson, head of mortality statistics at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. The death rate from drug overdose increased after decreasing the previous year, while the death rate from suicide fell for the first time since 2005.

Last year’s small gain will be erased by a big drop in longevity when the government releases the 2020 numbers next year. Mr. Anderson said that he performed a simple simulation based on mortality figures until August and found that life expectancy decreased by about 1 ½ years. For the entire year, he expects life expectancy to drop in two to three years.

“We have had many deaths added since August, so I think a two to three year drop to 2020 is not out of the question,” said Anderson. He said his figures are approximate estimates and that the government needs complete data to measure the exact impact of the pandemic on mortality in the United States.

A drop of this magnitude would mark the biggest decline in life expectancy since 1943, when deaths in World War II pushed that metric to 2.9 years, said Anderson. It would still be a much smaller decline than in 1918, when the so-called Spanish flu caused life expectancy to drop by 11.8 years, he said. This is partly because, unlike Covid-19, influenza was particularly deadly among children, whose deaths disproportionately reduce life expectancy.

Covid-19 is expected to be the third leading cause of death in 2020. On Monday, it killed more than 319,000 people in the United States, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Last year, heart disease killed about 659,000 people, cancer killed almost 600,000 people and deaths from accidents – the third leading cause of death – totaled about 173,000, according to CDC figures. More than 2.85 million people died in the United States last year, the highest number on record.

Kenneth M. Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire, said he estimated the pandemic will cause more deaths than births in more than half of US counties in 2020, for the first time in US history.

The overall US fertility rate fell to the lowest level on record last year, and is expected to decline further as the weak economy and health concerns deter women from having children. “We have people dying and congested hospital rooms,” said Prof. Johnson. “Who will want to have a child?”

Professor Johnson said that, based on his estimates, rural parts of the United States will be hardest hit by the phenomenon of deaths exceeding births. “Losing some people is much more impactful when everyone knows everyone than in a large urban area,” he said.

The United States was making progress in reducing death rates before the pandemic hit and was reversing some of the lost ground in the middle of the last decade. Last year, the death rate decreased for non-Hispanic whites and blacks, while remaining stable for Hispanics.

Among the top 10 causes of death, rates have dropped to seven of them: heart disease, cancer, chronic respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s disease, kidney disease, flu and pneumonia and suicide. Rates remained stable for stroke and diabetes. Flu and pneumonia were grouped as one category.

The only exception was the death rate from unintentional injuries: drug deaths helped push that rate up to 2.7%.

The only age group that saw a noticeable increase in mortality was 35-44 year olds, whose mortality rates increased 2.3% in 2019. Anderson said this was probably caused by drug overdose deaths.

Write to Janet Adamy at [email protected]