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Indiana life insurance CEO says deaths are up 40% among people ages 18-64

601 points by wsc981 5y ago

dukeofdoom 5y ago
This examination of pfizer's own vaccine safety study, claims that it shows an increase in all risk mortality. https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/media-resources/the-pfizer-inoculations-for-covid-19-more-harm-than-good-2/ https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/media-resources/th...
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  Just from the name I strongly suspect it's one of the disinformation spreaders.
  - incrudible 5y ago
    The information itself is neutral. The channel is not. Unfortunately, this information isn't digested by the sort of critical and investigative journalism that should exist in our society. The obviously wrong or misleading information gets "fact checked", but this just gets ignored. There's no room for nuance when the prevailing belief is that "everyone must get vaccinated or people will die".
ceva 5y ago
And rate for age between 1-100 i 99,9% lol
Flockster 5y ago
Unavailable from the EU.
- ur-whale 5y ago
  - CoastalCoder 5y ago
    Why?
    - derefr 5y ago
      Presumably because sites not available in the EU aren’t legally obligated to annoy everyone with cookie consent banners.
      - oneplane 5y ago
        They aren't legally obligated to track people with cookies either. It's always their own choice.
        dazc 5y ago
        But they have a cookie consent banner regardless of whether they are tracking people of not.
        hansel_der 5y ago
        Fixed that for you: But they are tracking people regardless of whether they have a cookie consent banner or not.
      - Xylakant 5y ago
        Why would a site available in the EU be obligated to annoy everyone with cookie consent banners. Many probably do, but it’s laziness on their part, but there’s no legal obligation to do so.
      - rob74 5y ago
        IANAL, but I doubt that sites not available in the EU are legally obligated to annoy non-EU visitors with cookie consent banners? Of course, it's easier to annoy everyone, but if you can block EU visitors based on their IP you can also show the cookie consent banner only for these IPs?
anttisalmela 5y ago
https://archive.is/VIzFv https://archive.is/VIzFv
netizen-936824 5y ago
Why should we believe this biased source? >Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica. So he sees the data for non elderly people, because those are the people who have his company's plans. So he doesn't have the data to compare against to say elderly people aren't dying at higher rates because they aren't his customers
- omosubi 5y ago
  Why must it be a comparison? A 40% increase in deaths for any population is mind boggling
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    Because the quoted source is literally making the comparison, which I am saying is incorrect because his data is biased. Please reread the piece I quoted to see the comparison >that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64”
    - zo1 5y ago
      You're being oddly pedanti? He could mean any number of things with that mention of elderly people.
      - netizen-936824 5y ago
        Because he is making claims of fact based on his available data. I am saying the statement is incorrect
        zo1 5y ago
        He also, in the article, mentions that he is looking at other companies in the market. "We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica". Anywho without more info about what access to data he is making his observations on, we're just speculating. Definitely can't say he is factually wrong with the vague and open bits of info from the article. It's just quotes that could mean almost anything.
omosubi 5y ago
- loeg 5y ago
  Additional deaths of despair are on the order of 1-10% of COVID deaths. I agree they are tragic, but the numbers do not support your conclusion.
  - msandford 5y ago
    Well how they are distributed is also important IMO. If you kill one young person for every 10 elderly you save that's a clear tradeoff situation. I don't know what the right answer is of course but it's not as though lockdowns are cost free as some have suggested.
    - loeg 5y ago
      Keep in mind, it isn’t obvious that killing more of their parents and grandparents would lower deaths of despair in youth — Covid itself is (IMO) depressing, not just lockdown measures.
- kenferry 5y ago
  Your comment made me interested to see what happened to the suicide rate. For 2020 it was down a touch. https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/16/the-pandemic-didnt-increase-suicides-that-shouldnt-be-a-surprise/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/16/the-pandemic-didnt-incre...
  - yissp 5y ago
    On the other hand, overdose deaths were up significantly, which I think would also be fair to categorize as "deaths of despair" [1]. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/20211117.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
k2enemy 5y ago
I'm actually surprised it is not higher. For 40-64 year old in the US, the annual chance of death is about half a percent (before covid) so a 40% increase is still a very low mortality rate. https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov/data/deathrates/index.php?stateFIPS=00&cod=247&race=00&sex=0&age=122&year=0&type=death&sortVariableName=rate&sortOrder=default https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov/data/deathrates/index.php?stat...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jb1991 5y ago
  I’m surprised it is as high as you claim! You’re saying that for that age group, in a given year, the chances are 1 in 200 of dying? That seems like pretty bad odds on something that is literally life and death.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    Well, also consider that people live to be roughly ~100 years old. The population is roughly stable, so every year ~1% of the population must die and be replaced by a ~1% is born.
  - brilee 5y ago
    Assuming risk is evenly distributed between birth and death, you would expect a 1 in 80 chance of dying in any given year. But since the risk is loaded towards the later years of life, 1 in 200 during the earlier years sounds about right. Perhaps it's 2x higher than I would have guessed otherwise, but it's the right order of magnitude.
    - brianwawok 5y ago
      No that is bad math around 1/80. If the average person had a 1/80 chance to die each year, the average life expectancy would be 40 years. Think about this another way. You have a gun with 80 chambers and 1 bullet. How many times on average can you point it at your head and pull the trigger before it goes off? Would you still argue 80 times? On average it is the last chamber?
andrewclunn 5y ago
> "The CDC weekly death counts, which reflect the information on death certificates and so have a lag of up to eight weeks or longer, show that for the week ending Nov. 6, there were far fewer deaths from COVID-19 in Indiana compared to a year ago – 195 verses 336 – but more deaths from other causes – 1,350 versus 1,319." So last year more covid deaths (particularly among the elderly), but while those numbers have declined, the numbers from younger "working age" people have increased more than enough to make up for it. > "Just 8.9% of ICU beds are available at hospitals in the state, a low for the year, and lower than at any time during the pandemic. But the majority of ICU beds are not taken up by COVID-19 patients – just 37% are, while 54% of the ICU beds are being occupied by people with other illnesses or conditions." Well a lot of people were avoiding medical care (precisely because of Covid concerns), so this makes some sense. Couple that with the increased death rate for younger people and something has happened to worsen the health and outcomes generally for that population. Cue wild speculation and theories.
- fuckyah 5y ago
- ganoushoreilly 5y ago
  Within my brothers circle of friends / former friends etc, amongst those that participate in recreational drug use, there have been a crazy number of Fentanyl related deaths. They're all between the ages of 25 - 30. I can't help but wonder how much this has an impact.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    All of the non-COVID deaths I’ve heard of among younger people (<60) from my extended social circle and their family/friends have been drug related. Working from home can remove a lot of the accountability that keeps addicts in check. When your coworkers can’t see you, it’s much easier to be inebriated or otherwise suffering from addiction-related issues without feeling social pressure to correct it.
    - 5y ago
agmsr 5y ago
I wonder what the fentanyl factor is.
- steelstraw 5y ago
  It was by far the top cause of death for 18 to 45 year olds in 2020 and 2021. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fentanyl-overdose-death/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fentanyl-overdose-death/
- whatever1 5y ago
  Fentanyl factor did not start in March of 2020.
  - austinkhale 5y ago
    2020 and 2021 both saw a sharp rise in fentanyl seizures at the border. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/fentanyl-seizures-u-s-southern-border-rise-dramatically-n1272676 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/fentanyl-seizur...
    - whatever1 5y ago
      Not sure what fentanyl death rates did in a particular neighborhood in the US, what I know is that CDC reported 100k overdose deaths /year for 2020-2021. That pales in comparison to the 600k excess deaths we had in the first 9 months of the pandemic in the US. Specially if you consider that the overdose deaths did not suddenly appear in 2020.
      - oneoff786 5y ago
        Numbers are tricky though. There’s much less than 100k covid deaths for those under 50. Whereas I would guess that’s the lion share of opioid deaths. 50-64 is another weird inflection point. It’s totally possible for covid to kill 6x as many people but for opioids to have a bigger impact of life expectancy. One 20 year old death is only offset by 60 or so 80 year old deaths.
    - 5y ago
howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
[flagged]
- vmception 5y ago
  Fentanyl, most likely. https://www.abc12.com/news/fentanyl-number-one-cause-of-death-for-adults-18-45-recent-government-data-says/article_ed0bfe28-5f79-11ec-8aa0-af3f6cbff03c.html https://www.abc12.com/news/fentanyl-number-one-cause-of-deat...
draw_down 5y ago
hnburnsy 5y ago
Just for background and not trying to malign the source, but the was at a press conference where the Chamber of Commerce and hospital leaders were imploring state residents to get vaccinated as to avoid a vaccine mandate that the state legislature was considering for employers Feels like the insurance guy at this press conference is trying to 'scare' young folks into getting the vaccine. My question is, the life insurance company would see all the death certificates, if they don't say Covid, what do they say?
- seoaeu 5y ago
  You allege bias, but the CEO of your life insurance company is like the textbook example of someone whose incentives are aligned with yours…
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    How come they market whole life policies? There's narrow circumstances where they might make sense, but that's about it.
    - LorenPechtel 5y ago
      Good for locking in a customer.
  - whatgoodisaroad 5y ago
    Not strictly so. An example of misaligned incentives would be an insurance salesman/CEO overstating the likelihood of death, and thus overstating the likelihood of a payout to the customer. This hypothetical would result in greater margin for the insurer.
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  In a lot of cases we don't even have a good cause of death. There are a lot of areas without a good medical examiner system and the systems are overloaded even when they normally are good. Covid is quite capable of killing with a clot when your symptoms aren't to the point that you'll be in the hospital these days. This will show up as a stroke or a heart attack or pulmonary embolism--and if the docs don't put in the effort they won't know it was Covid (and for that matter it can't be proven anyway--lethal clots happen even without Covid. While it's a reasonable presumption that Covid caused the clot there's no proof in any given case.) There's also a lot of families that don't want Covid on the death certificate--even more reason the clot won't be attributed to Covid. (And, yes, there are plenty of other ways clots can kill--I'm just looking at the cases that are likely to kill without ever reaching the hospital.) Undertakers have also been noticing this--lots of bodies showing Covid clotting even though they aren't reported as Covid deaths. Edit: I forgot an additional factor. If you do survive your Covid hospital stay you have a substantially elevated all-cause mortality rate at least for the next year. AFIAK the mechanism has not yet been identified.
TRossi 5y ago
“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.” This sounds very strange indeed, I'd like to see the numbers. For instance Euromomo https://www.euromomo.eu https://www.euromomo.eu collects the statistics about death rates, here is a plot for the Italian death rate and you can see the mortality spikes with the covid waves, but those are quite specific for the elderly https://imgur.com/a/8cUdNcb https://imgur.com/a/8cUdNcb It sounds very strange that the death spike is "over" 3 sigma, which should mean over 3 standard deviations, which is really unbelievable, to me this looks like an artefact of some sort
- pletnes 5y ago
  If the dataset which went into the «3 sigma» had no major catastrophes, like WW2 / covid / … then such an event can probably get you into «3 sigma territory».
- resoluteteeth 5y ago
  > It sounds very strange that the death spike is "over" 3 sigma, which should mean over 3 standard deviations, which is really unbelievable, to me this looks like an artefact of some sort Why does the fact that it is larger than 3 standard deviations suggest to you that it must be an artifact? If the death rate is normally very stable then the standard deviation will be small, so it will be easy for any unusual increase to exceed that.
  - hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
    I think the other thing that may be possible (just guessing, I'm not a statistician or actuarial) is that by using the term "3 sigma" I'm assuming they're modeling the data as a normal distribution. But these types of outlier events often follow power laws, such that you get "fat tails" when looking at a bell curve.
    - sigstoat 5y ago
      > that by using the term "3 sigma" I'm assuming they're modeling the data as a normal distribution variance and standard deviation don't only apply to normal distributions. and "sigma" is the symbol normally used for variance regardless of the underlying distribution. > I'm assuming sigh.
BillyTheKing 5y ago
I feel like article like this one are commonly used by the anti-vaccine community. They point to those ominous, rising death numbers and understand them as evidence for the dangers of mRNA vaccines. It would therefore (among other reasons) be helpful to understand where exactly that rise in numbers comes from, is it vaccines (which I don't think, else we'd be seeing a similar spike in, say, Europe)? Or is it being caused by other factors, such as fetanyl?
- Spooky23 5y ago
  The anti-vaccination people don’t need facts, so anything that creates FUD works for them. I live in a protest corridor, and the “freedom lovers” were demanding that we sacrifice the weak and old so that they could enjoy not getting a vaccine. It’s a gross type of mental illness.
  - csee 5y ago
    > "freedom lovers" were demanding that we sacrifice the weak and old Isn't it the opposite? I recall various right-leaning figures talking about 'sacrificing' the young. Release them in order to get natural immunity, while locking up the old until that process is done. I think that was a rather bad idea, especially with the hindsight of knowing how quickly the vaccines were ready, but that's separate.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      Like I said, they don’t make a lot of sense. I think there’s a few different branches of that approach. Why people were picketing a hospital with “sacrifice the weak” signs was very puzzling. But they were!
    - alisonkisk 5y ago
  - dukeofdoom 5y ago
    The vaccine does not prevent anyone from getting or spreading covid. In Ontario same case rate of covid per 100k residents, in unxxed as vaxxed and heading higher. 3rd graph. https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data?fbclid=IwAR2pRUq9GN9EEoDTm0OetspYalQy0Otcc41JS6b-L9BnzLOdhl1eZ1L4FHg https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data?fbclid=IwAR2pRUq9GN9EEoDTm0...
kyleblarson 5y ago
He says it's going to cost the company more but could there also be an increased incentive for covered employees to increase their coverage and thus increase the premium revenue to OneAmerica? I am generally dubious when the CEO of a (private) company that's bottom line is so closely tied to death rates publishes an article with such a nice round number increase in the death rate.
- oneoff786 5y ago
  Would you feel more at ease if he said 38.23%?
- 1123581321 5y ago
  It sounds rather like a public explanation for pricing changes. The pricing changes would be based on changes to underwriting, and reinsurance costs.
throwaway4good 5y ago
Life Expectancy in U.S. Declined 1.8 Years in 2020, CDC Says https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/life-expectancy-in-u-s-declined-1-8-years-in-2020-cdc-says-11640149261 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/life-expectancy-in-u-s-decl... This is for 2020 - COVID-19 deaths are more for 2021. Really wild numbers if you think about it.
- throwaway4good 5y ago
  It also hints that covid-19 related deaths are undercounted in the us.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    The Economist article posted here a few days ago had the US at a bit over 1 million deaths. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...
    - FabHK 5y ago
      Assuming that COVID deaths are fully accounted for, that would mean about 200k excess deaths due to other, presumably COVID related, factors (suicide, drug overdose, ...).
      - lostlogin 5y ago
        That's a big assumption though. Some places had death rates decline for many 'normal' causes of death. Suicide, flu and car crashes caused less deaths than usual where I am, and the lockdowns led a negative value for 'excess deaths'. I'm in New Zealand.
  - cmurf 5y ago
    That's what the CEO is quoted as saying: What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.
yehosef 5y ago
Here's an interesting video about an increase in sports-related deaths and heart-attacks. Maybe it's related? https://rumble.com/vpnxkr-are-these-side-effects-extremely-rare.html https://rumble.com/vpnxkr-are-these-side-effects-extremely-r...
- newacc9 5y ago
  There's funeral directors on youtube and bitchute that say their workload has increased 5x and the deaths are all heart related.
  - 542458 5y ago
    That doesn’t pass smell test to me. A 5x increase in workload for funeral homes would mean ballpark 5x as many deaths. That would be apocalyptic and impossible to miss. Every ER doc and ambulance driver in the US would be talking about it. For reference, the 2020 death rate is only about 1.15x the 2019 rate due to covid.
  - joenathanone 5y ago
    Link(s)?
    - newacc9 5y ago
      - 542458 5y ago
        This isn't some everyday funeral home director - this fellow had previously been in the alt-news (https://fullfact.org/health/funeral-director-interview/ https://fullfact.org/health/funeral-director-interview/), with baseless claims like facemasks causing pneumonia or that all the people who died in care homes were euthanized using midazolam or that the covid vaccines were never tested (at all) before deployment. I would not consider him an authoritative or unbiased source.
  - truffdog 5y ago
whiddershins 5y ago
I think these numbers are so extreme as to invite skepticism. Too often (omicron is 72% of cases) unbelievable numbers are, in fact, not to be believed.
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  The 72% figure was a computer prediction somehow gone wrong, I don't know the details of what went wrong. However, it's obvious Omicron is absolutely exploding--the testing system is completely swamped at this point so we don't know the real rate. That's enough to say that by now the 72% likely is right.
- yosito 5y ago
  Being skeptical doesn't mean that the numbers are not to be believed. It means that the numbers are to be investigated. Often, unintuitive numbers turn out to be accurate after investigation, but unless we do the hard work of investigation, we can't know.
frellus 5y ago
Pandemics are defined by "excess deaths" so nothing really surprising here.
- benjaminwootton 5y ago
  Covid is vanishingly unlikely to kill people in this age group. I always find it hard to find a clear number when I Google for a recent IFR, but it’s a fraction of a fraction of a percent.
  - nu11ptr 5y ago
    The problem is the age group they gave is very wide: 18-64. It would be helpful if they could sub-divide this to give better perspective to which age group is seeing the largest shift.
  - csee 5y ago
    What is your best guess based on what you've read, and for what age group is that figure for specifically? I have also been googling and have found no good source.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Death from any cause is unlikely in this age group. When the denominator is already small, small changes mortality can be cast as an alarming-sounding "40% increase" you really need to look at the raw numbers.
  - standardUser 5y ago
    I think your assumption is very wrong. COVID is a leading cause of death for Americans in the 18-64 age group in the US. The IFR is irrelevant when counting the dead.
civilized 5y ago
This may well be true in some suitably qualified sense, but it's odd to be hearing it from an insurance company first. General population death records would enable government health agencies to catch such large statistical shifts more quickly than an insurance company. I suspect what they're seeing is real, but they're exaggerating how representative it is of all geographic regions and socioeconomic strata. Maybe there's another wave of fentanyl ODs hitting the Rust Belt / Appalachia.
- nu11ptr 5y ago
  Key word: should I'm not suggesting they are suppressing or missing anything, but I would suggest we stay open to both possibilities.
- wjnc 5y ago
  Working as an actuary. The only way I can make sense of this headline (GDPR block) is: normally for age X deaths Y. Of those Y there are many with health preconditions that can’t get life coverage. Now a disease hits that kills some and effects everyone (this is somewhat contrary to the usual view of corona). You can have a massive increase in deaths without preconditions even if the absolute rise is small. So their deaths are up 40% compared to the expectation of the insurer (not general mortality). In other words: because of selection at the gate for long life you can get up to 50-70% lower premiums than the standard table assumes. So this insurer is having quite the scare. It’s one of the reasons why many EU insurers have balanced portfolios (and are strongly favored by regulation to be balanced). Long life, short life, pensions all in a basket with reinsurance to get these risks of the books. Throw in some P&C and A&H books as well (lower incidence of traffic accidents for example) and the company could be robust to corona. Now the interest rate and inflation, that’s a different story.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - red_trumpet 5y ago
    This let's you circumvent the GDPR block: https://web.archive.org/web/20220102164149/https://www.thecentersquare.com/indiana/indiana-life-insurance-ceo-says-deaths-are-up-40-among-people-ages-18-64/article_71473b12-6b1e-11ec-8641-5b2c06725e2c.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220102164149/https://www.thece...
WriterGuy2021 5y ago
I don't know what's going on and I'm scared.
- blihp 5y ago
  People aren't getting as much exercise, sitting around more eating cheetos and drinking beer, doing more drugs and getting more depressed. I'm not suggesting that all of those are happening to everyone, but each of them is a risk factor and due to the pandemic they're occurring to different segments of the population at the same time.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
encoderer 5y ago
> Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.” Do we have an actuarial crisis on our hands? We’ve seen the same thing in finance, disaster preparedness and other unrelated industries. We have “once in 200 years” events happening it seems far more often than once in 200 years. And how does it even pass muster that a 10% increase in deaths would be a “once in 200 years” event. When has there ever been a 200 year period without major war, disease or disaster? What exactly are they smoking?
- cperciva 5y ago
  I doubt there's an actuarial crisis brewing, for the simple reason that changes in life expectancy are a known risk which can be hedged. In the case of life insurance companies, the usual solution is to also sell life annuities; if insurance payouts go up, annuity payouts go down.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  >We have “once in 200 years” events happening it seems far more often than once in 200 years. I just don't take it seriously anymore. Track 200 factors, 200 businesses, or 200 industries and you will see 1 event per year. Track all of the above and you will see 40,000 such events in a year. More to the point, their actuarial model was probably wrong, not reality. Somewhere buried in their model were assumptions excluding black swan events
  - peteradio 5y ago
    Ok, but the important ones are resource limited and possibly highly correlated. So if you see 1/200 for all sorts of (possibly correlated) events you might be misreading the implication.
  - jeremyjh 5y ago
    I think the more thought-provoking question is what exactly is the Black Swan event? If only 37% of their ICU beds are used for COVID patients then why are so many more people dying right now?
setToNull 5y ago
The excess mortality numbers: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...
nikkinana 5y ago
paragisatool 5y ago
daenz 5y ago
18-64 is an extremely broad range. Does anyone have a breakdown of smaller ranges? I'd like to know what is accounting for the deaths of younger people, since supposedly, statistically covid has a very mild effect on their health.
erdewit 5y ago
Here in the Netherlands there's also a sharp increase in the excess mortality that can't be explained by COVID deaths. https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland
- bazooka_penguin 5y ago
  Lockdown/wfh related perhaps? I would definitely say I've become significantly more sedentary, likewise for many of my friends and coworkers, given we're all in tech.
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  People not wanting to see a doctor or go to hospital for non COVID related health issues out of fear? Reduced capacity in the health service for stuff like cancer?
- viktorcode 5y ago
  Different countries have different methods of determining if COVID was the cause of death, but so far if I remember correctly only Belgium has excess mortality equivalent to attributed COVID deaths, thanks to their cause qualification method (if COVID is only suspected but wasn't diagnosed, it is attributed to COVID).
hervature 5y ago
My hypothesis is that this is caused from diabetes. I first learned about this when my friend was diagnosed with diabetes at the beginning of the pandemic. He said that Stanford was investigating a potential connection. Now there is a bit more literature [1]. If you go to [2] and select "Weekly Number of Deaths by Cause Subgroup" and then "Other select causes" from the dropdown, you will see that diabetes jumped up at the start of the pandemic and has stayed at ~40% increased levels since. [1] - https://www.nih.gov/how-covid-19-can-lead-diabetes https://www.nih.gov/how-covid-19-can-lead-diabetes [2] - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
- yosito 5y ago
  The effects of covid on the pancreas are interesting to me. I started having what appear to be pancreatic issues in May. I'm wondering if it may have been triggered by an otherwise asymptomatic covid infection but I'm not sure how to confirm.
- NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
  A good chunk is fentanyl and suicide: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/micaelaburrow/2020/07/28/redfield-says-more-abovebase-suicides-than-covid-deaths-n2573278 https://townhall.com/tipsheet/micaelaburrow/2020/07/28/redfi...
- yucky 5y ago
  Interestingly enough, over 40% of all COVID deaths are diabetics. - https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/diabetics-make-up-40-of-covid-deaths-in-us-experts-say/ https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/diabetics-make-up-40-of-covid-...
  - snarf21 5y ago
    Well, that makes a lot of sense since covid is particularly lethal among those that are immuno-compromised.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
spenrose 5y ago
This story [1] (NYT paywall) is clearer IMHO: 1. 600,000 more elderly Americans, or 1 of 100, have died during the Covid epidemic than would have died had the epidemic not occurred. 2. 200,000 more non-elderly Americans, or 1 of 1,400, have died—but that's mostly ages 15-64, so more like 1 in 1,000 adults of working age. 3. The CDC says adult death rates were up 20%. [2] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/covid-deaths-elderly-americans.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/covid-deaths-elderly-a... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm#section_3 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm#secti...
- jtc331 5y ago
  Worth noting that while there is a clear and measurable increase, the CDC makes a nonetheless significant error by assuming 2019 is the baseline when in fact we see a baseline increase every year even without other factors (both because of increasing population and because of slowing advances in medically extending lifespans).
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    Population growth is about 0.4% in the US, so that's probably not a big factor. In 2019, the CDC estimated that age-adjusted expected lifespan increased by 1.2% [0]. I think the population growth would indicate a lower death rate than implied by direct counting, since total pop is the denominator. However, I think the increased lifespan would work in the counter direction - Americans should live longer in 2020 than in '19 without C19. So while the CDC made methodological mistakes, I don't think it would affect the conclusion. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2020/202012.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2020/...
    - Rondon11 5y ago
      Associated Press | Jan 31, 2020 at 11:53 AM For 1st time in 4 years, US life expectancy rises — a little https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/health-fitness/sns-life-expectancy-united-states-rises-20200131-e7ststpypzagrk53vukdo2onem-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/health-fitn...
dv_dt 5y ago
I wonder if vaccination status is going to be an policy pricing input
shadowgovt 5y ago
With few exceptions, if you want to know what's really going on, the insurance companies are the numbers to draw from. They have a vested interest in knowing what's happening and people usually have a vested interest in reporting to them to collect resources. (The exception is when there are secondary effects. Auto insurance reporting under samples minor accidents, because people don't want to risk their perfect driving record rate bonuses on a fender-bender. But there are no incentives to refrain from collecting on life insurance.)
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  Note that life insurance isn't going to be a good model--there are two selection biases at work here. 1) Those in ill health likely can't afford life insurance. 2) Life insurance is mostly to provide for dependents--which means people in good enough shape to have dependents and people are young enough to still have dependents. (Once the kids are grown there's much less reason for term life insurance.)
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Good point. You've highlighted two ways in which these numbers might under count COVID fatalities based on what we know about correlation with both age and prior health conditions and morbidity with this disease.
littlecranky67 5y ago
Mortality rates are basically up in all countries (at least those who can adequately measure it). My bet is that "after Covid" we will see rates under the pre-pandemic value for a couple of years as Covid was most lethal to those that would have died the next 0-5 years anyways without it.
- rkk3 5y ago
  Yes excess mortality it will probably go down in the older groups that died slightly pre-maturely. But the deaths in the 18-64 is not just from Covid-19 but from things exacerbated by it on the society level; Delaying treatment/tests, Drug Overdose, Alcoholism, Depression, Suicide, Traffic Accidents etc. Those are net-new and not necessarily ones that would have happened in the next 5 years.
  - erichurkman 5y ago
    Don't forget to add in the folks who technically recovered from COVID but are suffering lingering conditions like scarred lung tissue, kidney damage, atrial fibrillation, myocarditis, [...]. Those will add more sad stories over the coming years as those conditions will make recovering from other ailments harder.
  - sharperguy 5y ago
    I'm not seeing anyone mention obesity. Sitting around at home all day can also cause weight gain. Is there any data on this?
stakkur 5y ago
What ‘data’ is he referring to? It’s not mentioned in the article, and for all sorts of reasons 40% for 18-64 sounds statistically fishy.
amznbyebyebye 5y ago
Careful there, don’t want to give fodder to the anti vax crowd
- pclmulqdq 5y ago
  If the data suggests that lockdowns are causing excess mortality, that should be important to public policy discussions regardless of how it feels.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
I run the same trail for over 10 years. In the last year, I had to call 911 for a guy with chest pains and twice for suicidal women waiting on the train tracks for the train. Never happened before. I'm a little scared we may be entering a period of mass psychosis which is more deadly than any virus. The psychological conditions that lead people to burn witches and the rise of dictatorships are here. If I was richer I would probably be buying a home on some tiny island in the Caribbean. Great video on mass psychosis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09maaUaRT4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09maaUaRT4M
- fundad 5y ago
  Definitely a period of mass misery I see it also in the school vandalism, increase in shooting deaths and general uncertainty about rule of law
- mellavora 5y ago
  huh, I thought New Zealand was the preferred bug-out island.
nop_slide 5y ago
I can already see this being used as a source that the vaccines are the reason for the increased deaths. Could anyone point out if how vaccines as the casue could be ruled out by this data?
- cced 5y ago
  Why are you asking to rule it out and not question wether or not it _might_ be a contributing factor (however that might be)?
  - nop_slide 5y ago
    Sure let me rephrase. Does this data provide any support whether vaccines could be or not be a contributor?
- FabHK 5y ago
  You could check for excess mortality among vaccinated and unvaccinated people. I think the data is very clear: vaccination does not lead to excess mortality (unlike COVID).
  - nu11ptr 5y ago
    I think that would be very tricky to decouple variables here. The vaccine seems to reduce mortality from COVID, but if the vaccine were killing x% itself, the vaccine would only have to be more effective at saving from COVID than killing for that safety signal to be lost. In short, comparing vaxxed vs unvaxxed mortality alone isn't likely to tell you if you have a vaccine safety signal.
    - FabHK 5y ago
      You're right, you'd have to test whether people in each group are infected with COVID, and correct for that. Should still be doable. Would also need to correct for age and co-morbidities (doable), and also for differences in behaviour (hard).
    - 5y ago
lettergram 5y ago
People tend not to die in that age range from natural causes. Even covid has a relatively low impact in that range. For instance, I’d expect higher deaths in 2020 from covid than this year, assuming the vaccines are effective and not causing the issues (perhaps they are...?) I’m curious what factors are the major causes. I’m guessing mental health, obesity and drugs. Although anecdotal, I know multiple people who had a major downward spiral the past 12 months, particularly in mental health. Delaying treatment the last 18-24 months for basic checkups could also lead to some major issues.
- throwntoday 5y ago
  >assuming the vaccines are effective and not causing the issues (perhaps they are...?) The numbers on vaccine complications are almost certainly underreported, you could surmise this just by observing how they have made every effort to shut down any negative media about it to prevent "vaccine hesitancy". Perhaps it's not the vaccines even, but mistakes during administration from undertrained or exhausted medical workers (i.e. malpractice). At any rate the media appears to be making no fuss about the increasing number of young people getting heart attacks.
gumby 5y ago
My uncle was outside that age group but died last summer of a heart attack —- due to Covid. All the ICU beds in his area were occupied by Covid patients.
- MandieD 5y ago
  I’m so sorry. My father-in-law has had his “elective” surgery to deal with a hernia cancelled twice due to hospital overcapacity, and all we can do is pray that Germany’s current restrictions will have kept the numbers low enough for his current appointment this week and likely follow up procedure to deal with tachycardia to happen. They’re not even talking about rescheduling the hernia surgery anytime soon - he’s making do with a compression band. This is why it is other people’s business whether someone is vaccinated.
  - sm4rk0 5y ago
    I assume your opinion is "more vaccinated people => less load on hospitals", but this article hints it could be the opposite.
    - gumby 5y ago
      The article says no such thing, and in fact doesn’t even address that issue. The closest is the following: “It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.” The person quoted isn’t commenting on hospitals at all. For example my uncle doesn’t have COVID on his death certificate but his doctor says that his case was simple enough that he could have been saved had he been able to be admitted.
      - sm4rk0 5y ago
        The article quotes an MD: "The number of hospitalizations in the state is now higher than before the COVID-19 vaccine was introduced a year ago" The person I'm replying to mentioned "hospital overcapacity".
johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
I imagine it has something to do with shuttering society for the better part of two years now. Spouses are known to die within weeks of each other, presumably due to loneliness/lack of will to live/etc. If you force people to stop congregating, stop working out, stop having fun socially, etc... it's kind of the same thing, no? It must have some effect on people's health.
- whack 5y ago
  Luckily we don't need too vivid an imagination to find the answer. The data shows that the main cause of higher death rates is covid, not loneliness.
  - johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
    Source? The article does not have an answer or provide any data. It only talks about the uptick in deaths not attributed to covid.
    - fundad 5y ago
      The deaths could all be fire extinguisher attacks
throwawayboise 5y ago
If they are comparing deaths in 2020 when everyone except "essential workers" was stuck at home for 3/4 of the year, to 2021 when many more people were back to their routine of driving, work, recreation, etc. I would not be surprised to see a spike in deaths for young people who are back into doing a lot more things that can cause accidents. If they are comparing 2021 to something like a 10 year average death rate and seeing a 40% jump, then that is more interesting. Also raw numbers matter. Two deaths from some rare cause this year vs. one last year is a 100% increase, but doesn't really mean anything in a state with 6.5 million people.
ummonk 5y ago
A sizeable chunk of this is from fentanyl poisoning, which is now the leading cause of death amongst 18-45.
- raptorraver 5y ago
  I would assume that most of the people who die of fentanyl poisoning don't have life insurance.
smartplaya2001 5y ago
i wonder if it has anything related to the covid vaccine rollout? The timing coincides.
- sailingparrot 5y ago
  A much simpler explanation is that this is a side effect of the pandemic itself. The timing of the vaccine roll out is of course related to the timing of the pandemic. So it's expected that we would see some loose correlation in timing between the different events related to the pandemic. Things such as increase in mental issues and increased drug consumption due to loneliness, lack of medical care due to overflowed hospitals or loss of income etc. all took time to build up once the pandemic started. Just as it took time to manufacture and distribute a vaccine once the pandemic started.
  - h0nd 5y ago
    We havent had this side effect in the first year of the pandemic.
- propogandist 5y ago
  [flagged]
colordrops 5y ago
Another data point that the cure for the pandemic has been worse than the disease.
- ManuelKiessling 5y ago
  Well guess we have to build a time machine and run an A/B test where we don't do any of the COVID-19 measures to have a fair comparison, no?
  - Flankk 5y ago
    It's called a long-term study. B is the placebo group. The Pfizer vaccine was rolled out after a two-month study instead of the usual 5-10 years. Slide 12 of this document [1] shows an increase in death following the Pfizer inoculation. The Pfizer vaccine is causing acute myocarditis in people under the age of 50. This is causing people to collapse months later when the heart is put under strain with seemingly no symptoms. But don't listen to me, I'm just a crazy conspiracy theorist. In fact, go ahead and trust science and get yourself a booster shot. [1] https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/The-COVID-19-Inoculations-More-Harm-Than-Good-REV-Dec-16-2021.pdf https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/wp-content/uploads...
  - colordrops 5y ago
    It would be a thousand A/B tests, because there was no one "covid measure". Individual measures like wearing n95s in crowded areas like stores make sense, but not allowing music at gyms is stupid. My childrens' school is still on full lockdown. They are wearing masks outside and must keep distance from each other. And all students are fully vaccinated. Makes no sense.
  - raptorraver 5y ago
    Sweden handled things quite differently so you can look at their numbers.
Tycho 5y ago
Well a few months back in official UK mortality statistics from the ONS you could see a massive increase in the non-covid death rate for vaccinated people, but no one in the health authorities seemed to notice or feel the need to explain it. Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28532552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28532552
fundad 5y ago
There’s our labor shortage
ilaksh 5y ago
Well, I'm sure there is a little bit of significance, but you have to take into account that it's a relatively small number of deaths compared to the population size, and the person giving you the news about "DEATHs ARE UP" sells LIFE INSURANCE.
mcguire 5y ago
Supporting data: 2020 all-cause mortality was up 20% over 2019. (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db427.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db427.pdf)
giantg2 5y ago
More questions than answers. Would be nice to see where the increases are.
Faucilied 5y ago
[dead]
websap 5y ago
Coming to you soon - An app that tracks how frequently you're close other people and your insurance premium goes up based on it.
lkrubner 5y ago
Many people kept insisting "Not many young people are dying from Covid-19" a statement that over looked the fact that, under normal circumstances, not many young people die at all. But there was an article in the New York Times that offered these facts about people aged 20 to 40. July, 2019: 11,000 dead July, 2020: 16,000 dead Both numbers are small in a country where 3 million people die each year, about 250,000 a month. But it's still a 45% increase, so that age group was the worst affected, in terms of the increase in death. The increase in the death rate of old people was not as dramatic, as older people make up the vast majority of all deaths, every year.
- freyr 5y ago
  How many Covid-related? How many drug overdoses? How many suicides?
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    This seems like what-about-ism. You could look these numbers up easily on the CDCs death data, and then you could formulate a coherent thought. Instead, it seems like you're just trying to derail the conversation with as little effort as possible.
    - freyr 5y ago
      No, it’s not what-about-ism. It’s a suggestion that the two numbers being thrown around are accompanied by some bare minimum of detail to have a meaningful conversation. OP made the link to Covid-19, which seems very plausible, but it’s not clear if they have facts to support this or it’s just a guess. Suicides and overdoses are two of the leading causes of death among young Americans. It’s irresponsible to discuss a 40% increase in deaths and imply this is all Covid-19 without any evidence.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - halpert 5y ago
blindmute 5y ago
Most of this thread assumes this increase is directly due to dying of Covid; does the data support this? Or is the increase because of other CoDs?
Havoc 5y ago
How does that square with the reasonably low death rate on covid?
fuckyah 5y ago
irjustin 5y ago
I really appreciate the forwardness of the CEO w/ data, but this one seems interesting: > Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic Clearly the model doesn't account any massive problems to your customer base. 1-in-200yr is only the age of the country. Pandemics happen "relatively regularly" on those time scales[0]. Interesting balances though. $100mm losses w/ the current models vs the pandemic. Clearly life insurances will get quite expensive for a while. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
VikingCoder 5y ago
Walk me through this - You're a health insurance company. You set the premiums. Why aren't they raising the premiums on people who are not vaccinated against Coronavirus? Is there a law that says they can't?
zaroth 5y ago
This is a massive story and hugely under-reported. Most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths, Davison said. “What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.”
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Could very well be that the cause wasn't Covid but a deferred procedure. In that case Covid would probably be a secondary cause. I still think this needs further analysis. Perhaps the countermeasures were also part of the problem.
qwertyuiop_ 5y ago
Search news for "died suddenly" most of these are cardiac events or blood clots
tomcooks 5y ago
451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact info@franklinnews.org or call (847) 497-5230. MEH.
- softawre 5y ago
  Your country gets punished for trying to do the right thing. Just like some jobs are now hiring in "any state but Colorado", since if they hire in Colorado they have to post salary on the job description.
zo1 5y ago
Very disappointed that the other thread regarding this from today got merged into this one as a "dupe". I actually lost track of it and it feels like discussion about it is being "squashed". I went to HN on my desktop to discuss it and couldn't find it on the front-page anymore. Even though that may not be the intention.
GuB-42 5y ago
I looked at the statistics for the US and Europe US: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm (age related https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID_excess_mort_withcauses_01052022/WeeklyNumberByAge?:embed=y&:toolbar=n&:tabs=n&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID_excess_mort_withcause... ) Europe: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ Excess mortality seems to be way higher in the US than it is in the Europe, even though reported Covid deaths are in the same ballpark. In Europe, Covid deaths and excess mortality seem to match, more or less. In the US, excess mortality is several times higher.
Andi 5y ago
"451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact info@franklinnews.org or call (847) 497-5230." Which idiot is publishing this site?
Rondon11 5y ago
It is not peer reviewed yet but it should be. Censorship and institutional bias are some reasons why it has not been https://www.christianitydaily.com/articles/14298/20211216/columbia-university-study-finds-vaers-deaths-undercounted-by-factor-of-20.htm https://www.christianitydaily.com/articles/14298/20211216/co... They also found a U.S. national average vaccine-induced fatality rates or VFR of 0.04% and higher VFR with age. For those aged 0 to 17, they had a VFR of 0.004%, while those aged 75 and above had a VFR of 0.06%. Data showed that there were over 146,000 to 187,000 vaccine-related deaths in the U.S. alone between February to August 2021. The researchers wrote, "Notably, adult vaccination increased ulterior mortality of unvaccinated young."
falconroar 5y ago
Pretty likely this is associated with the huge increase in mental illness associated with isolation during the pandemic. The depression rate tripled from pre-pandemic levels, leading to a 20% increase in suicide rates. Obviously drug use and all the associated risks would increase due to that, but there are also a few studies showing a strong correlation between mental health and life expectancy, even after accounting for drug use. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)32316-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/10/depression-increased-during-covid-pandemic-how-to-feel-better-cope.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/10/depression-increased-during-...

601 points by wsc981 5y ago

This examination of pfizer's own vaccine safety study, claims that it shows an increase in all risk mortality. https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/media-resources/the-pfizer-inoculations-for-covid-19-more-harm-than-good-2/ https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/media-resources/th...

LorenPechtel 5y ago
Just from the name I strongly suspect it's one of the disinformation spreaders.
- incrudible 5y ago
  The information itself is neutral. The channel is not. Unfortunately, this information isn't digested by the sort of critical and investigative journalism that should exist in our society. The obviously wrong or misleading information gets "fact checked", but this just gets ignored. There's no room for nuance when the prevailing belief is that "everyone must get vaccinated or people will die".

ceva 5y ago

And rate for age between 1-100 i 99,9% lol

Flockster 5y ago

Unavailable from the EU.

ur-whale 5y ago
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  Why?
  - derefr 5y ago
    Presumably because sites not available in the EU aren’t legally obligated to annoy everyone with cookie consent banners.
    - oneplane 5y ago
      They aren't legally obligated to track people with cookies either. It's always their own choice.
      - dazc 5y ago
        But they have a cookie consent banner regardless of whether they are tracking people of not.
        hansel_der 5y ago
        Fixed that for you: But they are tracking people regardless of whether they have a cookie consent banner or not.
    - Xylakant 5y ago
      Why would a site available in the EU be obligated to annoy everyone with cookie consent banners. Many probably do, but it’s laziness on their part, but there’s no legal obligation to do so.
    - rob74 5y ago
      IANAL, but I doubt that sites not available in the EU are legally obligated to annoy non-EU visitors with cookie consent banners? Of course, it's easier to annoy everyone, but if you can block EU visitors based on their IP you can also show the cookie consent banner only for these IPs?

anttisalmela 5y ago

https://archive.is/VIzFv https://archive.is/VIzFv

netizen-936824 5y ago

Why should we believe this biased source? >Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica. So he sees the data for non elderly people, because those are the people who have his company's plans. So he doesn't have the data to compare against to say elderly people aren't dying at higher rates because they aren't his customers

omosubi 5y ago
Why must it be a comparison? A 40% increase in deaths for any population is mind boggling
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  Because the quoted source is literally making the comparison, which I am saying is incorrect because his data is biased. Please reread the piece I quoted to see the comparison >that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64”
  - zo1 5y ago
    You're being oddly pedanti? He could mean any number of things with that mention of elderly people.
    - netizen-936824 5y ago
      Because he is making claims of fact based on his available data. I am saying the statement is incorrect
      - zo1 5y ago
        He also, in the article, mentions that he is looking at other companies in the market. "We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica". Anywho without more info about what access to data he is making his observations on, we're just speculating. Definitely can't say he is factually wrong with the vague and open bits of info from the article. It's just quotes that could mean almost anything.

omosubi 5y ago

loeg 5y ago
Additional deaths of despair are on the order of 1-10% of COVID deaths. I agree they are tragic, but the numbers do not support your conclusion.
- msandford 5y ago
  Well how they are distributed is also important IMO. If you kill one young person for every 10 elderly you save that's a clear tradeoff situation. I don't know what the right answer is of course but it's not as though lockdowns are cost free as some have suggested.
  - loeg 5y ago
    Keep in mind, it isn’t obvious that killing more of their parents and grandparents would lower deaths of despair in youth — Covid itself is (IMO) depressing, not just lockdown measures.
kenferry 5y ago
Your comment made me interested to see what happened to the suicide rate. For 2020 it was down a touch. https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/16/the-pandemic-didnt-increase-suicides-that-shouldnt-be-a-surprise/ https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/16/the-pandemic-didnt-incre...
- yissp 5y ago
  On the other hand, overdose deaths were up significantly, which I think would also be fair to categorize as "deaths of despair" [1]. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/20211117.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2021/...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

k2enemy 5y ago

I'm actually surprised it is not higher. For 40-64 year old in the US, the annual chance of death is about half a percent (before covid) so a 40% increase is still a very low mortality rate. https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov/data/deathrates/index.php?stateFIPS=00&cod=247&race=00&sex=0&age=122&year=0&type=death&sortVariableName=rate&sortOrder=default https://hdpulse.nimhd.nih.gov/data/deathrates/index.php?stat...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jb1991 5y ago
I’m surprised it is as high as you claim! You’re saying that for that age group, in a given year, the chances are 1 in 200 of dying? That seems like pretty bad odds on something that is literally life and death.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Well, also consider that people live to be roughly ~100 years old. The population is roughly stable, so every year ~1% of the population must die and be replaced by a ~1% is born.
- brilee 5y ago
  Assuming risk is evenly distributed between birth and death, you would expect a 1 in 80 chance of dying in any given year. But since the risk is loaded towards the later years of life, 1 in 200 during the earlier years sounds about right. Perhaps it's 2x higher than I would have guessed otherwise, but it's the right order of magnitude.
  - brianwawok 5y ago
    No that is bad math around 1/80. If the average person had a 1/80 chance to die each year, the average life expectancy would be 40 years. Think about this another way. You have a gun with 80 chambers and 1 bullet. How many times on average can you point it at your head and pull the trigger before it goes off? Would you still argue 80 times? On average it is the last chamber?

andrewclunn 5y ago

> "The CDC weekly death counts, which reflect the information on death certificates and so have a lag of up to eight weeks or longer, show that for the week ending Nov. 6, there were far fewer deaths from COVID-19 in Indiana compared to a year ago – 195 verses 336 – but more deaths from other causes – 1,350 versus 1,319." So last year more covid deaths (particularly among the elderly), but while those numbers have declined, the numbers from younger "working age" people have increased more than enough to make up for it. > "Just 8.9% of ICU beds are available at hospitals in the state, a low for the year, and lower than at any time during the pandemic. But the majority of ICU beds are not taken up by COVID-19 patients – just 37% are, while 54% of the ICU beds are being occupied by people with other illnesses or conditions." Well a lot of people were avoiding medical care (precisely because of Covid concerns), so this makes some sense. Couple that with the increased death rate for younger people and something has happened to worsen the health and outcomes generally for that population. Cue wild speculation and theories.

fuckyah 5y ago
ganoushoreilly 5y ago
Within my brothers circle of friends / former friends etc, amongst those that participate in recreational drug use, there have been a crazy number of Fentanyl related deaths. They're all between the ages of 25 - 30. I can't help but wonder how much this has an impact.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  All of the non-COVID deaths I’ve heard of among younger people (<60) from my extended social circle and their family/friends have been drug related. Working from home can remove a lot of the accountability that keeps addicts in check. When your coworkers can’t see you, it’s much easier to be inebriated or otherwise suffering from addiction-related issues without feeling social pressure to correct it.
  - 5y ago

agmsr 5y ago

I wonder what the fentanyl factor is.

steelstraw 5y ago
It was by far the top cause of death for 18 to 45 year olds in 2020 and 2021. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fentanyl-overdose-death/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fentanyl-overdose-death/
whatever1 5y ago
Fentanyl factor did not start in March of 2020.
- austinkhale 5y ago
  2020 and 2021 both saw a sharp rise in fentanyl seizures at the border. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/fentanyl-seizures-u-s-southern-border-rise-dramatically-n1272676 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/fentanyl-seizur...
  - whatever1 5y ago
    Not sure what fentanyl death rates did in a particular neighborhood in the US, what I know is that CDC reported 100k overdose deaths /year for 2020-2021. That pales in comparison to the 600k excess deaths we had in the first 9 months of the pandemic in the US. Specially if you consider that the overdose deaths did not suddenly appear in 2020.
    - oneoff786 5y ago
      Numbers are tricky though. There’s much less than 100k covid deaths for those under 50. Whereas I would guess that’s the lion share of opioid deaths. 50-64 is another weird inflection point. It’s totally possible for covid to kill 6x as many people but for opioids to have a bigger impact of life expectancy. One 20 year old death is only offset by 60 or so 80 year old deaths.
  - 5y ago

howmayiannoyyou 5y ago

[flagged]

vmception 5y ago
Fentanyl, most likely. https://www.abc12.com/news/fentanyl-number-one-cause-of-death-for-adults-18-45-recent-government-data-says/article_ed0bfe28-5f79-11ec-8aa0-af3f6cbff03c.html https://www.abc12.com/news/fentanyl-number-one-cause-of-deat...

draw_down 5y ago

hnburnsy 5y ago

Just for background and not trying to malign the source, but the was at a press conference where the Chamber of Commerce and hospital leaders were imploring state residents to get vaccinated as to avoid a vaccine mandate that the state legislature was considering for employers Feels like the insurance guy at this press conference is trying to 'scare' young folks into getting the vaccine. My question is, the life insurance company would see all the death certificates, if they don't say Covid, what do they say?

seoaeu 5y ago
You allege bias, but the CEO of your life insurance company is like the textbook example of someone whose incentives are aligned with yours…
- maxerickson 5y ago
  How come they market whole life policies? There's narrow circumstances where they might make sense, but that's about it.
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    Good for locking in a customer.
- whatgoodisaroad 5y ago
  Not strictly so. An example of misaligned incentives would be an insurance salesman/CEO overstating the likelihood of death, and thus overstating the likelihood of a payout to the customer. This hypothetical would result in greater margin for the insurer.
LorenPechtel 5y ago
In a lot of cases we don't even have a good cause of death. There are a lot of areas without a good medical examiner system and the systems are overloaded even when they normally are good. Covid is quite capable of killing with a clot when your symptoms aren't to the point that you'll be in the hospital these days. This will show up as a stroke or a heart attack or pulmonary embolism--and if the docs don't put in the effort they won't know it was Covid (and for that matter it can't be proven anyway--lethal clots happen even without Covid. While it's a reasonable presumption that Covid caused the clot there's no proof in any given case.) There's also a lot of families that don't want Covid on the death certificate--even more reason the clot won't be attributed to Covid. (And, yes, there are plenty of other ways clots can kill--I'm just looking at the cases that are likely to kill without ever reaching the hospital.) Undertakers have also been noticing this--lots of bodies showing Covid clotting even though they aren't reported as Covid deaths. Edit: I forgot an additional factor. If you do survive your Covid hospital stay you have a substantially elevated all-cause mortality rate at least for the next year. AFIAK the mechanism has not yet been identified.

TRossi 5y ago

“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.” This sounds very strange indeed, I'd like to see the numbers. For instance Euromomo https://www.euromomo.eu https://www.euromomo.eu collects the statistics about death rates, here is a plot for the Italian death rate and you can see the mortality spikes with the covid waves, but those are quite specific for the elderly https://imgur.com/a/8cUdNcb https://imgur.com/a/8cUdNcb It sounds very strange that the death spike is "over" 3 sigma, which should mean over 3 standard deviations, which is really unbelievable, to me this looks like an artefact of some sort

pletnes 5y ago
If the dataset which went into the «3 sigma» had no major catastrophes, like WW2 / covid / … then such an event can probably get you into «3 sigma territory».
resoluteteeth 5y ago
> It sounds very strange that the death spike is "over" 3 sigma, which should mean over 3 standard deviations, which is really unbelievable, to me this looks like an artefact of some sort Why does the fact that it is larger than 3 standard deviations suggest to you that it must be an artifact? If the death rate is normally very stable then the standard deviation will be small, so it will be easy for any unusual increase to exceed that.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  I think the other thing that may be possible (just guessing, I'm not a statistician or actuarial) is that by using the term "3 sigma" I'm assuming they're modeling the data as a normal distribution. But these types of outlier events often follow power laws, such that you get "fat tails" when looking at a bell curve.
  - sigstoat 5y ago
    > that by using the term "3 sigma" I'm assuming they're modeling the data as a normal distribution variance and standard deviation don't only apply to normal distributions. and "sigma" is the symbol normally used for variance regardless of the underlying distribution. > I'm assuming sigh.

BillyTheKing 5y ago

I feel like article like this one are commonly used by the anti-vaccine community. They point to those ominous, rising death numbers and understand them as evidence for the dangers of mRNA vaccines. It would therefore (among other reasons) be helpful to understand where exactly that rise in numbers comes from, is it vaccines (which I don't think, else we'd be seeing a similar spike in, say, Europe)? Or is it being caused by other factors, such as fetanyl?

Spooky23 5y ago
The anti-vaccination people don’t need facts, so anything that creates FUD works for them. I live in a protest corridor, and the “freedom lovers” were demanding that we sacrifice the weak and old so that they could enjoy not getting a vaccine. It’s a gross type of mental illness.
- csee 5y ago
  > "freedom lovers" were demanding that we sacrifice the weak and old Isn't it the opposite? I recall various right-leaning figures talking about 'sacrificing' the young. Release them in order to get natural immunity, while locking up the old until that process is done. I think that was a rather bad idea, especially with the hindsight of knowing how quickly the vaccines were ready, but that's separate.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    Like I said, they don’t make a lot of sense. I think there’s a few different branches of that approach. Why people were picketing a hospital with “sacrifice the weak” signs was very puzzling. But they were!
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
- dukeofdoom 5y ago
  The vaccine does not prevent anyone from getting or spreading covid. In Ontario same case rate of covid per 100k residents, in unxxed as vaxxed and heading higher. 3rd graph. https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data?fbclid=IwAR2pRUq9GN9EEoDTm0OetspYalQy0Otcc41JS6b-L9BnzLOdhl1eZ1L4FHg https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data?fbclid=IwAR2pRUq9GN9EEoDTm0...

kyleblarson 5y ago

He says it's going to cost the company more but could there also be an increased incentive for covered employees to increase their coverage and thus increase the premium revenue to OneAmerica? I am generally dubious when the CEO of a (private) company that's bottom line is so closely tied to death rates publishes an article with such a nice round number increase in the death rate.

oneoff786 5y ago
Would you feel more at ease if he said 38.23%?
1123581321 5y ago
It sounds rather like a public explanation for pricing changes. The pricing changes would be based on changes to underwriting, and reinsurance costs.

throwaway4good 5y ago

Life Expectancy in U.S. Declined 1.8 Years in 2020, CDC Says https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/life-expectancy-in-u-s-declined-1-8-years-in-2020-cdc-says-11640149261 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/life-expectancy-in-u-s-decl... This is for 2020 - COVID-19 deaths are more for 2021. Really wild numbers if you think about it.

throwaway4good 5y ago
It also hints that covid-19 related deaths are undercounted in the us.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  The Economist article posted here a few days ago had the US at a bit over 1 million deaths. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...
  - FabHK 5y ago
    Assuming that COVID deaths are fully accounted for, that would mean about 200k excess deaths due to other, presumably COVID related, factors (suicide, drug overdose, ...).
    - lostlogin 5y ago
      That's a big assumption though. Some places had death rates decline for many 'normal' causes of death. Suicide, flu and car crashes caused less deaths than usual where I am, and the lockdowns led a negative value for 'excess deaths'. I'm in New Zealand.
- cmurf 5y ago
  That's what the CEO is quoted as saying: What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.

yehosef 5y ago

Here's an interesting video about an increase in sports-related deaths and heart-attacks. Maybe it's related? https://rumble.com/vpnxkr-are-these-side-effects-extremely-rare.html https://rumble.com/vpnxkr-are-these-side-effects-extremely-r...

newacc9 5y ago
There's funeral directors on youtube and bitchute that say their workload has increased 5x and the deaths are all heart related.
- 542458 5y ago
  That doesn’t pass smell test to me. A 5x increase in workload for funeral homes would mean ballpark 5x as many deaths. That would be apocalyptic and impossible to miss. Every ER doc and ambulance driver in the US would be talking about it. For reference, the 2020 death rate is only about 1.15x the 2019 rate due to covid.
- joenathanone 5y ago
  Link(s)?
  - newacc9 5y ago
    - 542458 5y ago
      This isn't some everyday funeral home director - this fellow had previously been in the alt-news (https://fullfact.org/health/funeral-director-interview/ https://fullfact.org/health/funeral-director-interview/), with baseless claims like facemasks causing pneumonia or that all the people who died in care homes were euthanized using midazolam or that the covid vaccines were never tested (at all) before deployment. I would not consider him an authoritative or unbiased source.
- truffdog 5y ago

whiddershins 5y ago

I think these numbers are so extreme as to invite skepticism. Too often (omicron is 72% of cases) unbelievable numbers are, in fact, not to be believed.

LorenPechtel 5y ago
The 72% figure was a computer prediction somehow gone wrong, I don't know the details of what went wrong. However, it's obvious Omicron is absolutely exploding--the testing system is completely swamped at this point so we don't know the real rate. That's enough to say that by now the 72% likely is right.
yosito 5y ago
Being skeptical doesn't mean that the numbers are not to be believed. It means that the numbers are to be investigated. Often, unintuitive numbers turn out to be accurate after investigation, but unless we do the hard work of investigation, we can't know.

frellus 5y ago

Pandemics are defined by "excess deaths" so nothing really surprising here.

benjaminwootton 5y ago
Covid is vanishingly unlikely to kill people in this age group. I always find it hard to find a clear number when I Google for a recent IFR, but it’s a fraction of a fraction of a percent.
- nu11ptr 5y ago
  The problem is the age group they gave is very wide: 18-64. It would be helpful if they could sub-divide this to give better perspective to which age group is seeing the largest shift.
- csee 5y ago
  What is your best guess based on what you've read, and for what age group is that figure for specifically? I have also been googling and have found no good source.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  Death from any cause is unlikely in this age group. When the denominator is already small, small changes mortality can be cast as an alarming-sounding "40% increase" you really need to look at the raw numbers.
- standardUser 5y ago
  I think your assumption is very wrong. COVID is a leading cause of death for Americans in the 18-64 age group in the US. The IFR is irrelevant when counting the dead.

civilized 5y ago

This may well be true in some suitably qualified sense, but it's odd to be hearing it from an insurance company first. General population death records would enable government health agencies to catch such large statistical shifts more quickly than an insurance company. I suspect what they're seeing is real, but they're exaggerating how representative it is of all geographic regions and socioeconomic strata. Maybe there's another wave of fentanyl ODs hitting the Rust Belt / Appalachia.

nu11ptr 5y ago
Key word: should I'm not suggesting they are suppressing or missing anything, but I would suggest we stay open to both possibilities.
wjnc 5y ago
Working as an actuary. The only way I can make sense of this headline (GDPR block) is: normally for age X deaths Y. Of those Y there are many with health preconditions that can’t get life coverage. Now a disease hits that kills some and effects everyone (this is somewhat contrary to the usual view of corona). You can have a massive increase in deaths without preconditions even if the absolute rise is small. So their deaths are up 40% compared to the expectation of the insurer (not general mortality). In other words: because of selection at the gate for long life you can get up to 50-70% lower premiums than the standard table assumes. So this insurer is having quite the scare. It’s one of the reasons why many EU insurers have balanced portfolios (and are strongly favored by regulation to be balanced). Long life, short life, pensions all in a basket with reinsurance to get these risks of the books. Throw in some P&C and A&H books as well (lower incidence of traffic accidents for example) and the company could be robust to corona. Now the interest rate and inflation, that’s a different story.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- red_trumpet 5y ago
  This let's you circumvent the GDPR block: https://web.archive.org/web/20220102164149/https://www.thecentersquare.com/indiana/indiana-life-insurance-ceo-says-deaths-are-up-40-among-people-ages-18-64/article_71473b12-6b1e-11ec-8641-5b2c06725e2c.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220102164149/https://www.thece...

WriterGuy2021 5y ago

I don't know what's going on and I'm scared.

blihp 5y ago
People aren't getting as much exercise, sitting around more eating cheetos and drinking beer, doing more drugs and getting more depressed. I'm not suggesting that all of those are happening to everyone, but each of them is a risk factor and due to the pandemic they're occurring to different segments of the population at the same time.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

encoderer 5y ago

> Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.” Do we have an actuarial crisis on our hands? We’ve seen the same thing in finance, disaster preparedness and other unrelated industries. We have “once in 200 years” events happening it seems far more often than once in 200 years. And how does it even pass muster that a 10% increase in deaths would be a “once in 200 years” event. When has there ever been a 200 year period without major war, disease or disaster? What exactly are they smoking?

cperciva 5y ago
I doubt there's an actuarial crisis brewing, for the simple reason that changes in life expectancy are a known risk which can be hedged. In the case of life insurance companies, the usual solution is to also sell life annuities; if insurance payouts go up, annuity payouts go down.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
>We have “once in 200 years” events happening it seems far more often than once in 200 years. I just don't take it seriously anymore. Track 200 factors, 200 businesses, or 200 industries and you will see 1 event per year. Track all of the above and you will see 40,000 such events in a year. More to the point, their actuarial model was probably wrong, not reality. Somewhere buried in their model were assumptions excluding black swan events
- peteradio 5y ago
  Ok, but the important ones are resource limited and possibly highly correlated. So if you see 1/200 for all sorts of (possibly correlated) events you might be misreading the implication.
- jeremyjh 5y ago
  I think the more thought-provoking question is what exactly is the Black Swan event? If only 37% of their ICU beds are used for COVID patients then why are so many more people dying right now?

setToNull 5y ago

The excess mortality numbers: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...

nikkinana 5y ago

paragisatool 5y ago

daenz 5y ago

18-64 is an extremely broad range. Does anyone have a breakdown of smaller ranges? I'd like to know what is accounting for the deaths of younger people, since supposedly, statistically covid has a very mild effect on their health.

erdewit 5y ago

Here in the Netherlands there's also a sharp increase in the excess mortality that can't be explained by COVID deaths. https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland https://www.rivm.nl/monitoring-sterftecijfers-nederland

bazooka_penguin 5y ago
Lockdown/wfh related perhaps? I would definitely say I've become significantly more sedentary, likewise for many of my friends and coworkers, given we're all in tech.
CodeGlitch 5y ago
People not wanting to see a doctor or go to hospital for non COVID related health issues out of fear? Reduced capacity in the health service for stuff like cancer?
viktorcode 5y ago
Different countries have different methods of determining if COVID was the cause of death, but so far if I remember correctly only Belgium has excess mortality equivalent to attributed COVID deaths, thanks to their cause qualification method (if COVID is only suspected but wasn't diagnosed, it is attributed to COVID).

hervature 5y ago

My hypothesis is that this is caused from diabetes. I first learned about this when my friend was diagnosed with diabetes at the beginning of the pandemic. He said that Stanford was investigating a potential connection. Now there is a bit more literature [1]. If you go to [2] and select "Weekly Number of Deaths by Cause Subgroup" and then "Other select causes" from the dropdown, you will see that diabetes jumped up at the start of the pandemic and has stayed at ~40% increased levels since. [1] - https://www.nih.gov/how-covid-19-can-lead-diabetes https://www.nih.gov/how-covid-19-can-lead-diabetes [2] - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

yosito 5y ago
The effects of covid on the pancreas are interesting to me. I started having what appear to be pancreatic issues in May. I'm wondering if it may have been triggered by an otherwise asymptomatic covid infection but I'm not sure how to confirm.
NaturalPhallacy 5y ago
A good chunk is fentanyl and suicide: https://townhall.com/tipsheet/micaelaburrow/2020/07/28/redfield-says-more-abovebase-suicides-than-covid-deaths-n2573278 https://townhall.com/tipsheet/micaelaburrow/2020/07/28/redfi...
yucky 5y ago
Interestingly enough, over 40% of all COVID deaths are diabetics. - https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/diabetics-make-up-40-of-covid-deaths-in-us-experts-say/ https://nypost.com/2021/07/16/diabetics-make-up-40-of-covid-...
- snarf21 5y ago
  Well, that makes a lot of sense since covid is particularly lethal among those that are immuno-compromised.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

spenrose 5y ago

This story [1] (NYT paywall) is clearer IMHO: 1. 600,000 more elderly Americans, or 1 of 100, have died during the Covid epidemic than would have died had the epidemic not occurred. 2. 200,000 more non-elderly Americans, or 1 of 1,400, have died—but that's mostly ages 15-64, so more like 1 in 1,000 adults of working age. 3. The CDC says adult death rates were up 20%. [2] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/covid-deaths-elderly-americans.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/covid-deaths-elderly-a... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm#section_3 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db427.htm#secti...

jtc331 5y ago
Worth noting that while there is a clear and measurable increase, the CDC makes a nonetheless significant error by assuming 2019 is the baseline when in fact we see a baseline increase every year even without other factors (both because of increasing population and because of slowing advances in medically extending lifespans).
- edmundsauto 5y ago
  Population growth is about 0.4% in the US, so that's probably not a big factor. In 2019, the CDC estimated that age-adjusted expected lifespan increased by 1.2% [0]. I think the population growth would indicate a lower death rate than implied by direct counting, since total pop is the denominator. However, I think the increased lifespan would work in the counter direction - Americans should live longer in 2020 than in '19 without C19. So while the CDC made methodological mistakes, I don't think it would affect the conclusion. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2020/202012.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2020/...
  - Rondon11 5y ago
    Associated Press | Jan 31, 2020 at 11:53 AM For 1st time in 4 years, US life expectancy rises — a little https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/health-fitness/sns-life-expectancy-united-states-rises-20200131-e7ststpypzagrk53vukdo2onem-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/health-fitn...

dv_dt 5y ago

I wonder if vaccination status is going to be an policy pricing input

shadowgovt 5y ago

With few exceptions, if you want to know what's really going on, the insurance companies are the numbers to draw from. They have a vested interest in knowing what's happening and people usually have a vested interest in reporting to them to collect resources. (The exception is when there are secondary effects. Auto insurance reporting under samples minor accidents, because people don't want to risk their perfect driving record rate bonuses on a fender-bender. But there are no incentives to refrain from collecting on life insurance.)

LorenPechtel 5y ago
Note that life insurance isn't going to be a good model--there are two selection biases at work here. 1) Those in ill health likely can't afford life insurance. 2) Life insurance is mostly to provide for dependents--which means people in good enough shape to have dependents and people are young enough to still have dependents. (Once the kids are grown there's much less reason for term life insurance.)
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Good point. You've highlighted two ways in which these numbers might under count COVID fatalities based on what we know about correlation with both age and prior health conditions and morbidity with this disease.

littlecranky67 5y ago

Mortality rates are basically up in all countries (at least those who can adequately measure it). My bet is that "after Covid" we will see rates under the pre-pandemic value for a couple of years as Covid was most lethal to those that would have died the next 0-5 years anyways without it.

rkk3 5y ago
Yes excess mortality it will probably go down in the older groups that died slightly pre-maturely. But the deaths in the 18-64 is not just from Covid-19 but from things exacerbated by it on the society level; Delaying treatment/tests, Drug Overdose, Alcoholism, Depression, Suicide, Traffic Accidents etc. Those are net-new and not necessarily ones that would have happened in the next 5 years.
- erichurkman 5y ago
  Don't forget to add in the folks who technically recovered from COVID but are suffering lingering conditions like scarred lung tissue, kidney damage, atrial fibrillation, myocarditis, [...]. Those will add more sad stories over the coming years as those conditions will make recovering from other ailments harder.
- sharperguy 5y ago
  I'm not seeing anyone mention obesity. Sitting around at home all day can also cause weight gain. Is there any data on this?

stakkur 5y ago

What ‘data’ is he referring to? It’s not mentioned in the article, and for all sorts of reasons 40% for 18-64 sounds statistically fishy.

amznbyebyebye 5y ago

Careful there, don’t want to give fodder to the anti vax crowd

pclmulqdq 5y ago
If the data suggests that lockdowns are causing excess mortality, that should be important to public policy discussions regardless of how it feels.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

I run the same trail for over 10 years. In the last year, I had to call 911 for a guy with chest pains and twice for suicidal women waiting on the train tracks for the train. Never happened before. I'm a little scared we may be entering a period of mass psychosis which is more deadly than any virus. The psychological conditions that lead people to burn witches and the rise of dictatorships are here. If I was richer I would probably be buying a home on some tiny island in the Caribbean. Great video on mass psychosis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09maaUaRT4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09maaUaRT4M

fundad 5y ago
Definitely a period of mass misery I see it also in the school vandalism, increase in shooting deaths and general uncertainty about rule of law
mellavora 5y ago
huh, I thought New Zealand was the preferred bug-out island.

nop_slide 5y ago

I can already see this being used as a source that the vaccines are the reason for the increased deaths. Could anyone point out if how vaccines as the casue could be ruled out by this data?

cced 5y ago
Why are you asking to rule it out and not question wether or not it _might_ be a contributing factor (however that might be)?
- nop_slide 5y ago
  Sure let me rephrase. Does this data provide any support whether vaccines could be or not be a contributor?
FabHK 5y ago
You could check for excess mortality among vaccinated and unvaccinated people. I think the data is very clear: vaccination does not lead to excess mortality (unlike COVID).
- nu11ptr 5y ago
  I think that would be very tricky to decouple variables here. The vaccine seems to reduce mortality from COVID, but if the vaccine were killing x% itself, the vaccine would only have to be more effective at saving from COVID than killing for that safety signal to be lost. In short, comparing vaxxed vs unvaxxed mortality alone isn't likely to tell you if you have a vaccine safety signal.
  - FabHK 5y ago
    You're right, you'd have to test whether people in each group are infected with COVID, and correct for that. Should still be doable. Would also need to correct for age and co-morbidities (doable), and also for differences in behaviour (hard).
  - 5y ago

lettergram 5y ago

People tend not to die in that age range from natural causes. Even covid has a relatively low impact in that range. For instance, I’d expect higher deaths in 2020 from covid than this year, assuming the vaccines are effective and not causing the issues (perhaps they are...?) I’m curious what factors are the major causes. I’m guessing mental health, obesity and drugs. Although anecdotal, I know multiple people who had a major downward spiral the past 12 months, particularly in mental health. Delaying treatment the last 18-24 months for basic checkups could also lead to some major issues.

throwntoday 5y ago
>assuming the vaccines are effective and not causing the issues (perhaps they are...?) The numbers on vaccine complications are almost certainly underreported, you could surmise this just by observing how they have made every effort to shut down any negative media about it to prevent "vaccine hesitancy". Perhaps it's not the vaccines even, but mistakes during administration from undertrained or exhausted medical workers (i.e. malpractice). At any rate the media appears to be making no fuss about the increasing number of young people getting heart attacks.

gumby 5y ago

My uncle was outside that age group but died last summer of a heart attack —- due to Covid. All the ICU beds in his area were occupied by Covid patients.

MandieD 5y ago
I’m so sorry. My father-in-law has had his “elective” surgery to deal with a hernia cancelled twice due to hospital overcapacity, and all we can do is pray that Germany’s current restrictions will have kept the numbers low enough for his current appointment this week and likely follow up procedure to deal with tachycardia to happen. They’re not even talking about rescheduling the hernia surgery anytime soon - he’s making do with a compression band. This is why it is other people’s business whether someone is vaccinated.
- sm4rk0 5y ago
  I assume your opinion is "more vaccinated people => less load on hospitals", but this article hints it could be the opposite.
  - gumby 5y ago
    The article says no such thing, and in fact doesn’t even address that issue. The closest is the following: “It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.” The person quoted isn’t commenting on hospitals at all. For example my uncle doesn’t have COVID on his death certificate but his doctor says that his case was simple enough that he could have been saved had he been able to be admitted.
    - sm4rk0 5y ago
      The article quotes an MD: "The number of hospitalizations in the state is now higher than before the COVID-19 vaccine was introduced a year ago" The person I'm replying to mentioned "hospital overcapacity".

johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago

I imagine it has something to do with shuttering society for the better part of two years now. Spouses are known to die within weeks of each other, presumably due to loneliness/lack of will to live/etc. If you force people to stop congregating, stop working out, stop having fun socially, etc... it's kind of the same thing, no? It must have some effect on people's health.

whack 5y ago
Luckily we don't need too vivid an imagination to find the answer. The data shows that the main cause of higher death rates is covid, not loneliness.
- johnnyApplePRNG 5y ago
  Source? The article does not have an answer or provide any data. It only talks about the uptick in deaths not attributed to covid.
  - fundad 5y ago
    The deaths could all be fire extinguisher attacks

throwawayboise 5y ago

If they are comparing deaths in 2020 when everyone except "essential workers" was stuck at home for 3/4 of the year, to 2021 when many more people were back to their routine of driving, work, recreation, etc. I would not be surprised to see a spike in deaths for young people who are back into doing a lot more things that can cause accidents. If they are comparing 2021 to something like a 10 year average death rate and seeing a 40% jump, then that is more interesting. Also raw numbers matter. Two deaths from some rare cause this year vs. one last year is a 100% increase, but doesn't really mean anything in a state with 6.5 million people.

ummonk 5y ago

A sizeable chunk of this is from fentanyl poisoning, which is now the leading cause of death amongst 18-45.

raptorraver 5y ago
I would assume that most of the people who die of fentanyl poisoning don't have life insurance.

smartplaya2001 5y ago

i wonder if it has anything related to the covid vaccine rollout? The timing coincides.

sailingparrot 5y ago
A much simpler explanation is that this is a side effect of the pandemic itself. The timing of the vaccine roll out is of course related to the timing of the pandemic. So it's expected that we would see some loose correlation in timing between the different events related to the pandemic. Things such as increase in mental issues and increased drug consumption due to loneliness, lack of medical care due to overflowed hospitals or loss of income etc. all took time to build up once the pandemic started. Just as it took time to manufacture and distribute a vaccine once the pandemic started.
- h0nd 5y ago
  We havent had this side effect in the first year of the pandemic.
propogandist 5y ago
[flagged]

colordrops 5y ago

Another data point that the cure for the pandemic has been worse than the disease.

ManuelKiessling 5y ago
Well guess we have to build a time machine and run an A/B test where we don't do any of the COVID-19 measures to have a fair comparison, no?
- Flankk 5y ago
  It's called a long-term study. B is the placebo group. The Pfizer vaccine was rolled out after a two-month study instead of the usual 5-10 years. Slide 12 of this document [1] shows an increase in death following the Pfizer inoculation. The Pfizer vaccine is causing acute myocarditis in people under the age of 50. This is causing people to collapse months later when the heart is put under strain with seemingly no symptoms. But don't listen to me, I'm just a crazy conspiracy theorist. In fact, go ahead and trust science and get yourself a booster shot. [1] https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/The-COVID-19-Inoculations-More-Harm-Than-Good-REV-Dec-16-2021.pdf https://www.canadiancovidcarealliance.org/wp-content/uploads...
- colordrops 5y ago
  It would be a thousand A/B tests, because there was no one "covid measure". Individual measures like wearing n95s in crowded areas like stores make sense, but not allowing music at gyms is stupid. My childrens' school is still on full lockdown. They are wearing masks outside and must keep distance from each other. And all students are fully vaccinated. Makes no sense.
- raptorraver 5y ago
  Sweden handled things quite differently so you can look at their numbers.

Tycho 5y ago

Well a few months back in official UK mortality statistics from the ONS you could see a massive increase in the non-covid death rate for vaccinated people, but no one in the health authorities seemed to notice or feel the need to explain it. Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28532552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28532552

fundad 5y ago

There’s our labor shortage

ilaksh 5y ago

Well, I'm sure there is a little bit of significance, but you have to take into account that it's a relatively small number of deaths compared to the population size, and the person giving you the news about "DEATHs ARE UP" sells LIFE INSURANCE.

mcguire 5y ago

Supporting data: 2020 all-cause mortality was up 20% over 2019. (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db427.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db427.pdf)

giantg2 5y ago

More questions than answers. Would be nice to see where the increases are.

Faucilied 5y ago

[dead]

websap 5y ago

Coming to you soon - An app that tracks how frequently you're close other people and your insurance premium goes up based on it.

lkrubner 5y ago

Many people kept insisting "Not many young people are dying from Covid-19" a statement that over looked the fact that, under normal circumstances, not many young people die at all. But there was an article in the New York Times that offered these facts about people aged 20 to 40. July, 2019: 11,000 dead July, 2020: 16,000 dead Both numbers are small in a country where 3 million people die each year, about 250,000 a month. But it's still a 45% increase, so that age group was the worst affected, in terms of the increase in death. The increase in the death rate of old people was not as dramatic, as older people make up the vast majority of all deaths, every year.

freyr 5y ago
How many Covid-related? How many drug overdoses? How many suicides?
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  This seems like what-about-ism. You could look these numbers up easily on the CDCs death data, and then you could formulate a coherent thought. Instead, it seems like you're just trying to derail the conversation with as little effort as possible.
  - freyr 5y ago
    No, it’s not what-about-ism. It’s a suggestion that the two numbers being thrown around are accompanied by some bare minimum of detail to have a meaningful conversation. OP made the link to Covid-19, which seems very plausible, but it’s not clear if they have facts to support this or it’s just a guess. Suicides and overdoses are two of the leading causes of death among young Americans. It’s irresponsible to discuss a 40% increase in deaths and imply this is all Covid-19 without any evidence.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - halpert 5y ago

blindmute 5y ago

Most of this thread assumes this increase is directly due to dying of Covid; does the data support this? Or is the increase because of other CoDs?

Havoc 5y ago

How does that square with the reasonably low death rate on covid?

fuckyah 5y ago

irjustin 5y ago

I really appreciate the forwardness of the CEO w/ data, but this one seems interesting: > Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic Clearly the model doesn't account any massive problems to your customer base. 1-in-200yr is only the age of the country. Pandemics happen "relatively regularly" on those time scales[0]. Interesting balances though. $100mm losses w/ the current models vs the pandemic. Clearly life insurances will get quite expensive for a while. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics

VikingCoder 5y ago

Walk me through this - You're a health insurance company. You set the premiums. Why aren't they raising the premiums on people who are not vaccinated against Coronavirus? Is there a law that says they can't?

zaroth 5y ago

This is a massive story and hugely under-reported. Most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths, Davison said. “What the data is showing to us is that the deaths that are being reported as COVID deaths greatly understate the actual death losses among working-age people from the pandemic. It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers.”

raxxorrax 5y ago
Could very well be that the cause wasn't Covid but a deferred procedure. In that case Covid would probably be a secondary cause. I still think this needs further analysis. Perhaps the countermeasures were also part of the problem.

qwertyuiop_ 5y ago

Search news for "died suddenly" most of these are cardiac events or blood clots

tomcooks 5y ago

451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact info@franklinnews.org or call (847) 497-5230. MEH.

softawre 5y ago
Your country gets punished for trying to do the right thing. Just like some jobs are now hiring in "any state but Colorado", since if they hire in Colorado they have to post salary on the job description.

zo1 5y ago

Very disappointed that the other thread regarding this from today got merged into this one as a "dupe". I actually lost track of it and it feels like discussion about it is being "squashed". I went to HN on my desktop to discuss it and couldn't find it on the front-page anymore. Even though that may not be the intention.

GuB-42 5y ago

I looked at the statistics for the US and Europe US: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm (age related https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID_excess_mort_withcauses_01052022/WeeklyNumberByAge?:embed=y&:toolbar=n&:tabs=n&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link https://public.tableau.com/views/COVID_excess_mort_withcause... ) Europe: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/ Excess mortality seems to be way higher in the US than it is in the Europe, even though reported Covid deaths are in the same ballpark. In Europe, Covid deaths and excess mortality seem to match, more or less. In the US, excess mortality is several times higher.

Andi 5y ago

"451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact info@franklinnews.org or call (847) 497-5230." Which idiot is publishing this site?

Rondon11 5y ago

It is not peer reviewed yet but it should be. Censorship and institutional bias are some reasons why it has not been https://www.christianitydaily.com/articles/14298/20211216/columbia-university-study-finds-vaers-deaths-undercounted-by-factor-of-20.htm https://www.christianitydaily.com/articles/14298/20211216/co... They also found a U.S. national average vaccine-induced fatality rates or VFR of 0.04% and higher VFR with age. For those aged 0 to 17, they had a VFR of 0.004%, while those aged 75 and above had a VFR of 0.06%. Data showed that there were over 146,000 to 187,000 vaccine-related deaths in the U.S. alone between February to August 2021. The researchers wrote, "Notably, adult vaccination increased ulterior mortality of unvaccinated young."

falconroar 5y ago

Pretty likely this is associated with the huge increase in mental illness associated with isolation during the pandemic. The depression rate tripled from pre-pandemic levels, leading to a 20% increase in suicide rates. Obviously drug use and all the associated risks would increase due to that, but there are also a few studies showing a strong correlation between mental health and life expectancy, even after accounting for drug use. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)32316-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/10/depression-increased-during-covid-pandemic-how-to-feel-better-cope.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/10/depression-increased-during-...