Counting and attributing deaths to the coronavirus is not easy. That’s one reason it’s useful to look at “excess deaths” to judge the toll and severity of this plague in various parts of the world.
Excess deaths are basically the answer to a subtraction problem. Look at how many deaths typically occur in a given city, state, or country in a given week or month, adjust for population change, and then see how many people died there in that week or month in 2020.
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The grim fact is that a lot more people are dying these days than normally do. From March 1 to April 18, the death rate from all causes combined tripled in New York City. That’s the extreme case. But in my state, about 1,100 more people died than were expected to die. In the country as a whole, we’ve just had four straight weeks with death numbers well above the expected.
Over the past four weeks, we’ve had 50,000 excess deaths across the United States.
These numbers are generally higher than confirmed, or even suspected, coronavirus deaths during those periods. This leads to a reasonable suspicion that our official coronavirus death counts are lower than the real coronavirus death toll. That argument is even stronger when you consider that lockdowns are probably reducing traffic deaths.
But here’s the complicating factor: Although lockdowns are preventing some deaths, they are undoubtedly increasing deaths by other causes. This virus is killing people not only by infecting millions but also by inducing a policy response that kills people.
First, amid this policy-induced isolation, we should worry about deaths of despair. People need connection and community. Isolation kills in many ways. We don’t have data that the lockdowns are causing more suicides, but plenty of health experts believe they will. People struggling with drug addiction are finding it harder to get the treatment they need. This could cause relapses and eventually, death.
It’s reasonable to worry about increases in drinking, and thus alcoholism and alcohol-related deaths. (Though, with less driving, we’ll have fewer DWIs.)
In the United Kingdom, authorities are reporting a “surge” in reports of domestic abuse. Others have seen similar numbers worldwide.
People are also missing out on crucial medical care because of the coronavirus. Some of that is due to doctors and nurses being occupied with the coronavirus. But not every medical professional is slammed by this plague. In fact, many have been laid off or reduced to zero hours due to pandemic-related policy. Many treatments are simply not happening. The result is that ill people don’t get the healthcare they would be getting.
Hundreds of thousands of cancer patients, for instance, are missing chemotherapy sessions. One study of people in the U.S. and U.K. with cancer estimated a 45% to 66% drop in chemotherapy appointments. Add in a 70% to 89% drop in new cancer screenings, and you see that COVID-19, and our reaction to it, will likely cause deaths by cancer among people who never got the virus but did lose out on treatments.
This study estimates that 33,890 more people will die of cancer due to lost healthcare services during the coronavirus shutdown.
One cardiologist in New York City noted how dramatically heart-health doctor visits are dropping and said, “I think the toll on non-COVID patients will be much greater than COVID deaths.”
Compare the headline numbers, and coronavirus deaths will probably outnumber lockdown deaths. But as cases decline, we will reach a point where the COVID-19 deaths we’re preventing are comparable to the lockdown deaths we’re causing. At that point, and in those places, the argument becomes very strong for loosening lockdown restrictions.
Also, recession and unemployment will cause deaths through the above mechanisms and others.
We have the lockdowns in place to save lives. Let’s make sure we lift the lockdowns before they are, on net, costing lives.
