SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Here are several updates showing the impact of the Pandemic, collected over the past few months:

Why Life Expectancy Keeps Dropping in the U.S. as Other Countries Bounce Back
COVID cut average life spans short in many high-income countries, but the U.S. decline has been steeper and longer than most (Nov 21, 2022)



The U.S. Just Lost 26 Years’ Worth of Progress on Life Expectancy
COVID and overdose deaths have sharply cut U.S. life expectancy, with Indigenous peoples experiencing the biggest decline (Oct 17, 2022)




CDC: Life Expectancy in the U.S. Dropped for the Second Year in a Row in 2021 (Aug 31, 2022)

Life expectancy at birth in the United States declined nearly a year from 2020 to 2021, according to new provisional data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). That decline – 77.0 to 76.1 years – took U.S. life expectancy at birth to its lowest level since 1996. The 0.9 year drop in life expectancy in 2021, along with a 1.8 year drop in 2020, was the biggest two-year decline in life expectancy since 1921-1923. ...

Other findings documented in the report: ...

• • The declines in life expectancy since 2019 are largely driven by the pandemic. COVID-19 deaths contributed to nearly three-fourths or 74% of the decline from 2019 to 2020 and 50% of the decline from 2020 to 2021. An estimated 16% of the decline in life expectancy from 2020 to 2021 can be attributed to increases in deaths from accidents/unintentional injuries. Drug overdose deaths account for nearly half of all unintentional injury deaths. The most recent data reported by NCHS showed more than 109,000 overdose deaths in the one-year period ending in March of 2022.
  • Other causes of death contributing to the decline in life expectancy from 2020 to 2021 include heart disease (4.1% of the decline), chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (3.0%), and suicide (2.1%). For men, the one-year decline in life expectancy was attributed primarily to mortality from COVID-19 (49.5% of the decline), unintentional injuries (19.1%), suicide (3.6%), chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (3.4%), and homicide (2.5%). For women, the 0.8 year decline in life expectancy was attributed mainly to mortality from COVID-19 (51.2% of the decline), unintentional injuries (14.8%), heart disease (5.7%), stroke (3.5%), and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (2.4%).

NVSS Vital Statistics Rapid Release
Report No. 23  August 2022
Provisional Life Expectancy Estimates for 2021




A record $100 billion was paid out in life insurance benefits last year (Nov 28, 2022)

US life insurers paid out a record $100 billion in benefits in 2021, according to new data released Monday by the American Council of Life Insurers.

That’s a nearly 11% jump from 2020, which represented the largest year-over-year increase (15.4%) since the 1918 influenza pandemic.

“For the second year in a row, life insurance benefit payments increased by double-digit percentages,” ...

The purchase of life insurance coverage in 2021 also rose, with nearly 46 million policies sold, a 6.1% increase over 2020, although the total dollar coverage of those newly purchased policies dropped by 1.3% to $3.3 trillion. The average size of a new individual policy purchased last year was $189,830, according to ACLI data.

 

"“The shift toward higher mortality in younger ages in 2021 reflects both the successful vaccination of the majority of older adults who were most at risk of dying from COVID-19 and the relatively low uptake of vaccination in younger adults,” says Theresa Andrasfay, a postdoctoral scholar in gerontology at the University of Southern California, who was not involved in the new study."

“There is a confluence of factors contributing to greater and more persistent losses in the U.S., including a less robust national response to the pandemic in 2020, lower adherence to social distancing guidelines, a higher prevalence of underlying conditions and lower vaccination,” Andrasfay says. “The U.S. stood out in terms of having more deaths from causes other than COVID-19, indicating that the U.S. did a worse job containing the impacts of the pandemic on the broader health care system.”

"But at the same time, you had a worsening opioid crisis, deaths of despair, deaths due to drug intake.” And these trends only accelerated in 2020 when COVID emerged, he says."

My takeaways from the article - proof if you want to have greater life expectancy - get vaccinated.

The breakdown of certain elements of our culture have a direct impact on life expectancy enhanced by - youth, drug use, alcohol use, smoking, diet etc.

As a parent I need to have a sit-down back and forth discussion with our younger college age kids again - I can already see their eyes rolling but I am going to do it anyway.

 

what's the big deal with life expectancy? it's quality of life that's important, and we've been striking out on that one since time immemorial

 

The loss of the curious is always sad. Life remains new.

The one who ‘know it all’ have already died.

Bob Wilson

 

From what I see, it has been vastly improved.

While people are surviving and recovering from their initial health problems much better than did their ancestors, and going on to accumulate numerous more health conditions before expiring than did their ancestors, they are also experiencing plenty of joy and great additional life quality in between those ill health episodes. It is very definitely a net gain.

 

wrong thread, sorry

 

It is somewhat hard to understand the mutation abilities of a virus. Some like measles remain relatively static but others are chameleons to our technology and sad to say, understanding. But we are a clever species and may yet develop and master the future virus.

Bob Wilson

 

and could these mutating abilities have been enhanced in a lab?

 

The "lab" is called humanity and some species that we cohabitate with. You know, pretty much every living critter. But you bring up an important defect in our species.

Often instead of addressing a problem, there is a desire to find the guilty. This gets in the way of more effective approaches. Yes, there are evil critters but they are far out numbered by the clumsy thinkers.

Bob Wilson

 

There are at least two biological labs known to have smallpox samples. Held primarily to develop rapid vaccine responses, they could be released like we once gave infectious blankets to native people. But even in the age of ebola, our species has more or less handled it.

Bob Wilson

 

it is interesting that even in china, where we westerners perceive extreme government control, vaccination acceptance is low. or is it the poorly functioning vaccine that's the problem?

 

Didn't we presume that ½ year ago …... & ½ a year before that?
.

 

A different local reporter will have some big shoes to fill.

 

All nations in the world need to get together and pass treaties that ban all current and future gain-of-function (GOF) and loss-of-function (LOF) going on in labs. It's clear that lab-mutated viruses are very deadly and, once released, can cause catastrophic damage for years. A strain of the Ebola virus had a near 90% mortality rate and, yet, many labs today are still performing testing on it. It only takes ONE virus in a human to start the spread.
It's interesting Covid 19 came out in China and they waited to notify the world community, even after shutting down some cities, and, most importantly, kept international travel open until AFTER it was spread outside of China. Was this on purpose? Of course it was, economy trumps human lives to the Chicoms, it always has. And why hasn't the international community investigated the origins of Covid?

 

they were, until zi zi tossed them out.

i can't think they released it on purpose though, it has also wrecked their own economy

 

Not all virus research is gain or loss of function.