4 ms·

Covid is the #1 killer of LEOs in 2020 and 2021

65 points by consumer451 5y ago

jinpa_zangpo 5y ago
I don't want to minimize the damage caused by Covid-19 over the past year. But I think cardiovascular diseases probably killed more police officers over the past year.
- addicted 5y ago
  Not according to the actual statistics that are available on that page. And if you look at 2017, 2018, 2019, deaths ranged from 150-180. 2020 and 2021 they've jumped to over 350 (and 2021 isn't over yet). So it isn't even, as someone who at least clicked the link might suggest, Cardiovascular disease being presented as COVID.
richbradshaw 5y ago
How does this compare to the overall death rates? Are LEOs an outlier here?
- cyounkins 5y ago
  Across all ages COVID looks to be #2 in causes of death but #1 for ages 35-54. [1] Note that only in 5-6% of deaths is COVID the only cause of death. CDC has data on comorbidities [2] [1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/covid19-and-other-leading-causes-of-death-in-the-us/ https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/covid19-and-other-... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Comorbidities https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Co...
- farmerstan 5y ago
  The average age of death from Covid in the US is higher than the average age of overall death. So I don’t think it applies everywhere. I think occupations that don’t encounter so many people probably have a lower death rate.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  If I am doing the numbers right, the overall US COVID death rate is ~2200 per 100K and LEOs are 476 from that site out of (from other sources) about 700K, which is 68 per 100K. Which initially makes LEOs look like they are doing quite well, but I suspect its quite bad once you correct for age demographics of the population and the law enforcement profession. There aren't a lot of cops in the age groups with the highest COVID-19 death rates... Then its a high contact profession that has been highly resistant to every control measure (to the point of actively sabotaging enforcement in many places where they were responsible for it), so its not at all surprising that they would be hard hit.
  - chaoskanzlerin 5y ago
    The original site doesn't seem to be a good source - Texas has 3.5x the absolute numbers of California.
    - addicted 5y ago
      Texas also has/had much more COVID than CA. And they also probably have different policing styles.
      - chaoskanzlerin 5y ago
        CA had 0.06 cases per capita [since Jan 1 2021], TX is at 0.07. "LEO density" doesn't offset this enough either, so there has to be some reporting error.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        Or behavioral (possibly driven by departmental policy) differences in LEO community between states. Or...lots of other things.
dpeck 5y ago
Isn’t COVID likely to be the #1 killer of most professions in 2020/2021, since most professions are mercifully not that dangerous anymore? LEO isn’t in the top 10 of the life threatening profession list in US, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/27/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america-according-to-bls-data.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/27/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-i.... I’d wager COVID was also the #1 killer of retail clerks, florists, and probably software engineers for the last two years as well.
- throw_away 5y ago
  Was curious & looks like COVID is the #1 killer of fire fighters as well: https://apps.usfa.fema.gov/firefighter-fatalities/fatalityData/incidentDataReport?deathYear=2021&page=1&max=10&offset=0 https://apps.usfa.fema.gov/firefighter-fatalities/fatalityDa...
- consumer451 5y ago
  You are correct. IIRC, LEOs are around #16 after loggers, fishermen, and bartenders. But considering the amount of push back on vaccine mandates, including threats of walkouts and mass retirement, the effects of politicizing the vaccine and COVID in general are truly stunning. This is what was significant about this to me. edit: I see your edit with the source now, thanks.
- pstuart 5y ago
  Cops are worshipped by society because "they put their life on the line". This, like the link you shared, should disabuse people of that notion. Unfortunately it will change nothing.
  - honkycat 5y ago
    They are needed to enforce property rights and political agendas ( war on drugs aka the war on the poor) nothing more. They do not have a duty to protect you and are often working to directly harm people.
    - postalrat 5y ago
toiletfuneral 5y ago
Wtf is wrong with cops, the #1 death of K9’s is heat stroke? So basically negligence by their handlers? It’s a mazing we trust these dumbasses with guns. Additional Source : https://thebark.com/content/surprising-cause-death-police-dogs https://thebark.com/content/surprising-cause-death-police-do...
Lammy 5y ago
Is this from COVID, or “with COVID”? Makes sense that professions dealing directly with random members of the public would be more likely to get infected.
travisgriggs 5y ago
LEO = Law Enforcement Officer At least that’s my guess from the context of the page. I was pretty sure it wasn’t those born July 22 - August 22 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_(astrology) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_(astrology)) Totally agree with the irony notes by others of this given the LEOs reaction to vaccines.
- devcpp 5y ago
  I did wonder how Low Earth orbits got killed.
  - stevage 5y ago
    I misread and thought it was about lego
- 1_player 5y ago
  It should be illegal to use acronyms without expanding them on first use. It annoys me so much, and American-English speakers are so fond of them.
taxicabjesus 5y ago
Had a friend from college who became a police officer. He probably would have survived COVID-19 if he could've waited a week before going to the hospital. He certainly went along with getting ventilated because he believed the doctors knew what they were doing. Ventilations fell off a cliff a week later (in April 2020) when the doctors started to ignore the official guidelines for COVID-19. Whatever happened to those ventilators that President Trump ordered? None of them got used, because front line doctors figured out that following the official guidance to ventilate their patients ASAP were death sentences. My LEO-friend is certainly listed as a COVID-19 fatality, not an iatrogenic one. Inconvenient for the powers that be to consider that he was medically deteriorated with ventilation & oxygenation. Oxygen is known to be toxic [0], but modern doctors seem to just figure "what else can we do, when the patient's oxygen saturation level crashes?" (because their training doesn't cover the antidote that makes supplemental oxygen non-toxic). The technical terms for damage done to lungs with ventilators is barotrauma. Sometimes ventilation is justified for short duration [surgery, etc]. Ventilation has never been found helpful for pneumonia. I'm trying to coin Medical Hyperventilation as a term of art [1]. My term hasn't taken off yet, but the science is entirely settled about everything in my writeup. [0] Space-cabin Atmospheres: Oxygen toxicity (1964) (google.com) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883728 [1] The folly of medical hyperventilation - https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilation.html https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilat... (I've since figured out how Medicine was tricked into no longer using the antidote for oxygen toxicity. The turning point from science-based oxygenation to our modern science-free practice was in 1955.)
- maxerickson 5y ago
  How did you write all of that and not address the fact that ventilators typically use air with added oxygen, not pure oxygen?
  - taxicabjesus 5y ago
    Thanks for the feedback. I am not overly familiar with ventilation protocols, I just understand that some ventilation strategies are more aggressive than others. I will edit to clarify. This is a great article that says that ventilators have been studied for pneumonia and found to not help improve survival outcomes: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/Ventilators-aren-t-a-panacea-for-a-pandemic-like-coronavirus https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/Ventilators-aren-t-a-pan...
dqpb 5y ago
Also quite sad to see all those k9’s dying of heat stroke.
- jobigoud 5y ago
  For those wondering like me, K9 = canine.

65 points by consumer451 5y ago

I don't want to minimize the damage caused by Covid-19 over the past year. But I think cardiovascular diseases probably killed more police officers over the past year.

addicted 5y ago
Not according to the actual statistics that are available on that page. And if you look at 2017, 2018, 2019, deaths ranged from 150-180. 2020 and 2021 they've jumped to over 350 (and 2021 isn't over yet). So it isn't even, as someone who at least clicked the link might suggest, Cardiovascular disease being presented as COVID.

richbradshaw 5y ago

How does this compare to the overall death rates? Are LEOs an outlier here?

cyounkins 5y ago
Across all ages COVID looks to be #2 in causes of death but #1 for ages 35-54. [1] Note that only in 5-6% of deaths is COVID the only cause of death. CDC has data on comorbidities [2] [1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/covid19-and-other-leading-causes-of-death-in-the-us/ https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/covid19-and-other-... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Comorbidities https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Co...
farmerstan 5y ago
The average age of death from Covid in the US is higher than the average age of overall death. So I don’t think it applies everywhere. I think occupations that don’t encounter so many people probably have a lower death rate.
dragonwriter 5y ago
If I am doing the numbers right, the overall US COVID death rate is ~2200 per 100K and LEOs are 476 from that site out of (from other sources) about 700K, which is 68 per 100K. Which initially makes LEOs look like they are doing quite well, but I suspect its quite bad once you correct for age demographics of the population and the law enforcement profession. There aren't a lot of cops in the age groups with the highest COVID-19 death rates... Then its a high contact profession that has been highly resistant to every control measure (to the point of actively sabotaging enforcement in many places where they were responsible for it), so its not at all surprising that they would be hard hit.
- chaoskanzlerin 5y ago
  The original site doesn't seem to be a good source - Texas has 3.5x the absolute numbers of California.
  - addicted 5y ago
    Texas also has/had much more COVID than CA. And they also probably have different policing styles.
    - chaoskanzlerin 5y ago
      CA had 0.06 cases per capita [since Jan 1 2021], TX is at 0.07. "LEO density" doesn't offset this enough either, so there has to be some reporting error.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        Or behavioral (possibly driven by departmental policy) differences in LEO community between states. Or...lots of other things.

dpeck 5y ago

Isn’t COVID likely to be the #1 killer of most professions in 2020/2021, since most professions are mercifully not that dangerous anymore? LEO isn’t in the top 10 of the life threatening profession list in US, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/27/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america-according-to-bls-data.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/27/the-10-most-dangerous-jobs-i.... I’d wager COVID was also the #1 killer of retail clerks, florists, and probably software engineers for the last two years as well.

throw_away 5y ago
Was curious & looks like COVID is the #1 killer of fire fighters as well: https://apps.usfa.fema.gov/firefighter-fatalities/fatalityData/incidentDataReport?deathYear=2021&page=1&max=10&offset=0 https://apps.usfa.fema.gov/firefighter-fatalities/fatalityDa...
consumer451 5y ago
You are correct. IIRC, LEOs are around #16 after loggers, fishermen, and bartenders. But considering the amount of push back on vaccine mandates, including threats of walkouts and mass retirement, the effects of politicizing the vaccine and COVID in general are truly stunning. This is what was significant about this to me. edit: I see your edit with the source now, thanks.
pstuart 5y ago
Cops are worshipped by society because "they put their life on the line". This, like the link you shared, should disabuse people of that notion. Unfortunately it will change nothing.
- honkycat 5y ago
  They are needed to enforce property rights and political agendas ( war on drugs aka the war on the poor) nothing more. They do not have a duty to protect you and are often working to directly harm people.
  - postalrat 5y ago

toiletfuneral 5y ago

Wtf is wrong with cops, the #1 death of K9’s is heat stroke? So basically negligence by their handlers? It’s a mazing we trust these dumbasses with guns. Additional Source : https://thebark.com/content/surprising-cause-death-police-dogs https://thebark.com/content/surprising-cause-death-police-do...

Lammy 5y ago

Is this from COVID, or “with COVID”? Makes sense that professions dealing directly with random members of the public would be more likely to get infected.

travisgriggs 5y ago

LEO = Law Enforcement Officer At least that’s my guess from the context of the page. I was pretty sure it wasn’t those born July 22 - August 22 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_(astrology) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_(astrology)) Totally agree with the irony notes by others of this given the LEOs reaction to vaccines.

devcpp 5y ago
I did wonder how Low Earth orbits got killed.
- stevage 5y ago
  I misread and thought it was about lego
1_player 5y ago
It should be illegal to use acronyms without expanding them on first use. It annoys me so much, and American-English speakers are so fond of them.

taxicabjesus 5y ago

Had a friend from college who became a police officer. He probably would have survived COVID-19 if he could've waited a week before going to the hospital. He certainly went along with getting ventilated because he believed the doctors knew what they were doing. Ventilations fell off a cliff a week later (in April 2020) when the doctors started to ignore the official guidelines for COVID-19. Whatever happened to those ventilators that President Trump ordered? None of them got used, because front line doctors figured out that following the official guidance to ventilate their patients ASAP were death sentences. My LEO-friend is certainly listed as a COVID-19 fatality, not an iatrogenic one. Inconvenient for the powers that be to consider that he was medically deteriorated with ventilation & oxygenation. Oxygen is known to be toxic [0], but modern doctors seem to just figure "what else can we do, when the patient's oxygen saturation level crashes?" (because their training doesn't cover the antidote that makes supplemental oxygen non-toxic). The technical terms for damage done to lungs with ventilators is barotrauma. Sometimes ventilation is justified for short duration [surgery, etc]. Ventilation has never been found helpful for pneumonia. I'm trying to coin Medical Hyperventilation as a term of art [1]. My term hasn't taken off yet, but the science is entirely settled about everything in my writeup. [0] Space-cabin Atmospheres: Oxygen toxicity (1964) (google.com) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883728 [1] The folly of medical hyperventilation - https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilation.html https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilat... (I've since figured out how Medicine was tricked into no longer using the antidote for oxygen toxicity. The turning point from science-based oxygenation to our modern science-free practice was in 1955.)

maxerickson 5y ago
How did you write all of that and not address the fact that ventilators typically use air with added oxygen, not pure oxygen?
- taxicabjesus 5y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. I am not overly familiar with ventilation protocols, I just understand that some ventilation strategies are more aggressive than others. I will edit to clarify. This is a great article that says that ventilators have been studied for pneumonia and found to not help improve survival outcomes: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/Ventilators-aren-t-a-panacea-for-a-pandemic-like-coronavirus https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/Ventilators-aren-t-a-pan...

dqpb 5y ago

Also quite sad to see all those k9’s dying of heat stroke.

jobigoud 5y ago
For those wondering like me, K9 = canine.