COVID Death Trends: The Young and the Old Are Okay Now

 It's been a while since I pulled CDC death statistics to see the effect of COVID on US deaths, but I was inspired to do so again because I'd seen several people talk recently lately about their fears that lot of kids will die due to the surge in the Delta variant (a surge which is mostly being fueled by the reservoir of unvaccinated people, although some vaccinated people are suffering breakthrough infections as well.)

Once again, I looked at the data on total deaths available from the CDC FluView website.  Although this website is designed to provide info on deaths due to influenza, COVID, and pneumonia, it also provides data on total deaths so that you can see the percent of total deaths resulting from respiratory ailments.  

Since some people have questioned whether other deaths "with COVID" are being classified as deaths from COVID, I've considered it most objective to look at the changes in the total number of deaths.  

So let's start by looking at the cause for concern that I've heard lately: that a lot of kids under 12 will be dying because they're too young to be vaccinated.  The good news is that at no point during the pandemic have the deaths of people under 18 been higher than we would expect in an average year.  Indeed, kids have been dying slightly less than they would on average during 2020 and 2021.  Over the last year and a half, 2,800 fewer children than we would normally expect have died.

Obviously, this doesn't mean that COVID is harmless.  Although young children are less likely to get COVID than people in their teens or older, and when they do get it they often get more mild cases, there have been instances of lasting effects which are concerning.  But when it comes to the specific concern that "lots of kids are going to die" as a result of in person schooling or lack of mask mandates or what have you in the face of continuing COVID rates, it does not appear that at any point during the pandemic kids have been dying at elevated levels.

Now let's look at the vulnerable group which is talked about most in relation to COVID, those over 65.

This was really fascinated to me.  From the start of the pandemic through February of 2021, mortality for those who are 65 or older has averaged 25% above normal rates.  Half a million more people in that age category died from March 2020 to Feb 2021 than you would have otherwise expected.  However, in March of 2021, the death rates for people in that age range fell back to average.  After being 25% higher than expected, since March they are 2% higher than expected.  I suspect that what we are seeing here is the effect of the big vaccine push this spring.  Older people were given first priority in getting vaccinated, and during March we passed a hundred million doses administered.  Nationally, just over 80% of people 65 and older have now been vaccinated, and that seems to have had an effect.

So how about everyone else, adults between 18 and 65?  This is the group which, in relative terms, continues to suffer the most.  From March 2020 to Feb 2021, the deaths per week among Americans aged 18 to 65 were 25% above normal, just like for those over 65.  During the period, 160,000 more adults under 65 died than we would otherwise expect.  This is a smaller absolute number than for those over 65, but remember: people under 65 are just less likely to die overall.  So although a given person under 65 may be less likely to die of COVID than a person over 65, they're also less likely to die of old age, heart attack, cancer, etc.  It's more unusual for people under 65 to die, and an average of 3,352 more have died each week the first twelve months of the pandemic than you would otherwise expect.

Have things gotten better for adults under 65?

A bit.  In April and May of 2020, deaths for adults under 65 averaged 28% higher than average.  During those same months this year, they averaged 16% above average.  (I'm excluding the last seven calendar weeks from all of this analysis because it takes a while for the CDC to get death data updated, so the recent weeks always look unusually low and get revised later.)  But that 16% above average mortality is a lot higher than the 2% above average which we're seeing for those over 65.  We're seeing about 2,100 more deaths of adults under 65 every week since March than we would normally expect to see based on previous years.  That's more than 20,000 extra dead people.  

Why? 

I think it has to do with vaccination rates.  According to the CDC, 80.4% of those over 65 are fully vaccinated.  61.1% of those over 18 are fully vaccinated.  From the absolute numbers and percentages, it's easy to calculate that only 56% of those between 18 and 65 are vaccinated.  

The vaccines for COVID are impressively effective.  And although those over 65 are more likely to die of COVID, all other things being equal, than those under 65, 80% of the 65+ population is vaccinated while only 56% of the 18-65 population is vaccinated.  The result is that from April to mid June, those over 65 suffered 10,718 more deaths than you would expect based on the 2016 to 2019 baseline, while those between 18 and 65 suffered 19,454 excess deaths.

Kids are doing mostly okay because pre-pubescent kids are physically less susceptible to the virus. People over 65 are doing okay because they're pretty heavily vaccinated and many are taking precautions. People 18-65 are dying at higher rates than they need to and should go ahead and get the shot.