Via The Guardian: True number of Covid deaths in the US likely undercounted, experts say. Excerpt:
The true number of deaths from the Covid pandemic in the US is likely being undercounted, due to the long-lasting and little-understood effects of Covid infection and other deadly complications that surged during the past two years.
“We are seeing right now the highest death rates we have ever seen in the history of this business,” J Scott Davison, CEO of insurance company OneAmerica, told journalists on 30 December.
“Death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said, among working-age people between 18 and 64. Deaths among older Americans have also increased, with one in 100 Americans over the age of 65 dying.
There have been an estimated 942,431 excess deaths in the US since February 2020, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hispanic, Black and Native American and Alaska Native populations have been disproportionately affected with high death rates, research shows.
Previous crises pale in comparison to the pandemic, Davison said. “A one-in-200-year catastrophe would be a 10% increase over pre-pandemic [levels]. So 40% is just unheard of.”
Many of the deaths aren’t counted in the official Covid tally, he said, because they happen months after Covid infections. “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 certificates, but deaths are up in just huge, huge numbers.”
In addition to deaths from Covid-19, drug overdoses – already one of the leading causes of death for working-age adults – and homicides have also risen during the pandemic.
Insurers are also seeing a rise in disability claims – at first for short-term disability and now for long-term disability, because of both long Covid and delayed care for other illnesses, “because people haven’t been able to get the health care that they need because the hospitals are overrun”, Davison said. It’s a trend ”consistent across every player in the business” of insurance.
Deaths from long Covid have been particularly difficult to track, because the virus may no longer be present at the time of death, but it weakened organs or created fatal new ailments.
“We’re seeing the statistics get written as we go, almost,” Micah Pollak, associate professor of economics at Indiana University Northwest, said. And high rates of mortality and disability will only continue as more people get infected, he said.
