How many people are dying in America?
According to the current statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics, the number of fatalities in the United States last year declined to 3,078,290 from 3,269,042 in 2022.
The fatality rate had jumped significantly during the pandemic. The 2023 number is very close to what it would have been following the prepandemic trendline.
The pandemic jump
Prior to the pandemic, the number of people who died in the U.S. every year was very consistent. From 1960 to 2019, the U.S. fatality rate (fatalities/1,000 population) was about 8.75, or one in every 114 people. The rate ranged from a high of 9.5 to a low of 7.9.
From 1970 to 2010, there had been a slight downtrend in the rate. However, beginning in 2011, the rate began a slow but steady increase of about 1.3% per year, associated with an aging population and a slight decline in life expectancy.
For the pandemic years 2020 to 2022, the rate averaged 10.2, about a 22% increase from before the pandemic. The rate for 2023, the first post-pandemic year, was 9.1.
If there had been no pandemic and the longterm trend of increasing 1.3% a year had continued, the rate last year would have been almost exactly 9.1. Of course, we only live on one timeline, so it is impossible to know what would have happened without a pandemic.
Two conclusions
I think we can likely draw two conclusions from this data. First, the good news, the rate at which people are dying in America is pretty much back to normal. The bad news is that during 2020-2022, around 1.4 million more people died than we would have expected had there been no pandemic. The CDC estimates that about 1.2 million died from COVID.
Of course, there is some disagreement whether in all the deaths the CDC attributed to COVID it was the principal cause of death or only a contributing cause because so many who died from the disease had multiple comorbidities.
Regardless, there was an increase in fatalities that exceeded the number the disease caused.
I suspect that detailed study would show that many of these fatalities were caused by unintended consequences of our reaction to the virus. We know that drug overdoses are up during the pandemic and that certain chronic drivers of fatalities, like cardiovascular issues and cancer, were up due to a decline in routine early detection.
In less developed countries, collateral fatalities were almost certainly even higher. This UN report estimated that 43 million people in Africa were at risk of extreme famine because of the fallout from the pandemic in May 2022.
An enormous toll
It is unquestionable that the coronavirus pandemic exacted an enormous toll on our country and the entire world, and not just in the additional fatalities it caused. Much of the damage was attributable to the lethality and the transmissibility of the disease.
But a great deal of the damage was also due to our reactions to it. Frequently, our leaders reacted to the pandemic on imperfect information, which often led to misguided “cures” that were worse than disease.
I have been reluctant to criticize actions that were taken in the heat of the moment, but the next time we face a similar crisis, our leaders should be more cognizant of the potential harm from the unintended consequences of the policy decisions.