Despite the vaccines, US life expectancy tumbled again last year


It wasn’t a huge surprise when it was announced in 2021 that life expectancy in the US had fallen in 2020 – as it did in a number of other developed countries. But everyone was expecting it to rebound in 2021, since…you know…there were effective vaccines available. In fact, the US probably did the best job of having vaccines ready in sufficient quantities of any developed country. What could possibly go wrong? As it turns out, a lot.

Last week, WaPo did a great analysis of the 2021 numbers. You should read the article, but here are my highlights (lowlights?):

·        The US did worse in 2021 (and 2020) than 19 other wealthy countries. True, we did better than our 1.87-year decline in 2020, which was almost on a par with the decline in 1943, the worst year of World War II – that drop was 2.9 years. But while almost all of the other wealthy countries had an increase in life expectancy in 2021, we dropped .39 years.

·        The good news is that, while black and Hispanics had borne far more than their share of the drop in 2020, they turned that around dramatically in 2021. Hispanic life expectancy was almost flat, but Black expectancy increased by .42 years.

·        So how is it that life expectancy dropped last year, when the two worst-hit groups from 2020 did much better in 2021? You guessed it: White life expectancy declined by about a third of a year (four months).

·        What causes does the article point to for this turn of events? You guessed it: “vaccine hesitancy” and “…an overriding desire to put the pandemic behind us…”

The article includes a startling quote from Laudan Aron of the Urban Institute: “The life expectancy gap between the United States and its peer-income countries is now over five years, which is an incredible gap,” she said. “Death and life expectancy? That’s the ultimate marker of what it means to live in a country.”

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, April 10.

Month

Deaths reported during month/year

Avg. deaths per day during month/year

Deaths as percentage of previous month/year

Month of March 2020

4,058

131

 

Month of April

59,812

1,994

1,474%

Month of May

42,327

1,365

71%

Month of June

23,925

798

57%

Month of July

26,649

860

111%

Month of August

30,970

999

116%

Month of Sept.

22,809

760

75%

Month of Oct.

24,332

785

107%

Month of Nov.

38,293

1,276

157%

Month of Dec.

79,850

2,576

209%

Total 2020

354,215

1,154

 

Month of Jan. 2021

98,604

3,181

119%

Month of Feb.

68,918

2,461

70%

Month of March

37,945

1,224

55%

Month of April

24,323

811

64%

Month of May

19,843

661

82%

Month of June

10,544

351

53%

Month of July

8,833

287

84%

Month of August

31,160

1,005

351%

Month of Sept.

56,687

1,890

182%

Month of Oct.

49,992

1,613

88%

Month of Nov.

38,364

1,279

77%

Month of Dec.

41,452

1,337

108%

Total 2021

492,756

1,350

158%

Month of Jan. 2022

65,855

2,124

159%

Month of Feb. 2022

63,451

2,266

96%

Month of March 2022

31,427

1,014

50%

Total Pandemic so far

1,012,223

1,337

 

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 1,012,223

Average daily deaths last seven days: 471

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 655

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.3%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 82,073,451

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 198,919 (28,417/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 229,110 (32,730/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.2% (0.3% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.

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