Many countries saw 18% excess deaths during the two years of the pandemic. There should have been a drop in excess deaths as we got COVID under control. More people who would have died this year from old age and natural causes died in the past 2 years from covid. Therefore, this year’s excess deaths should be below average. Excess deaths are at the 10-20% level in many countries even as COVID deaths droped and gone from pandemic to epidemic.
In England and Wales, for 14 of the past 15 weeks, around 1,000 extra deaths each week, (none of which are due to covid. IF the current trajectory continues, then non-Covid excess deaths will be more than COVID deaths this year. This was reported by Prof Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, Oxford University.
The excess deaths seem to be primarily circulatory, diabetes and cancer. But the reason for those extra deaths is unknown. IF this remains unsolved and is not fixed or does not stop on its own then this would be an extra 1 million deaths per year. [2 billion people with an extra 20% deaths.] If it also was impacting China, India, other Asian and African countries at the same level then this would be an extra 3 million deaths per year.
The US excess deaths is currently at about 8%, but the US has a population is over five times the level of the UK. This is about 2000-4000 extra deaths per week in the US.
Brazil with 200 million people is showing the recent 20% excess deaths. There is no data from India and China.
Excess deaths are measured against the monthly five-year average. Five-year averages would be “inflated” by two years of pandemic deaths. If we were returning to normal then the deaths should drop and easily stay below pandemic years.
Excess all-cause mortality across counties in the United States, March 2020 to December 2021.
An estimated 936,911 excess deaths occurred during 2020 and 2021, of which 171,168 (18.3%) were not assigned to Covid-19 on death certificates.
Possible mix of causes related to increased systemic increases in stress, systemic decline in lifestyle and diet or some hidden and subtle long post-COVID related issues.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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