US deaths in 2020 top 3 million, by far most ever counted
Final mortality data because of this year will never be designed for months. But preliminary numbers advise that america is on the right track to see more than 3.2 million deaths this season, or at least 400,000 more than in 2019.
U.S. deaths increase most years, so some gross annual rise in fatalities is expected. But the 2020 numbers amount to a jump around 15%, and could increase once all of the deaths from this month are counted.
That could mark the major single-year percentage leap since 1918, when thousands of U.S. soldiers died in World War I and hundreds of thousands of Americans died in a flu pandemic. Deaths rose 46% that year, weighed against 1917.
COVID-19 has killed a lot more than 318,000 Americans and counting. Before it came along, there was cause to be hopeful about U.S. death trends.
The nation’s overall mortality rate fell somewhat in 2019, due to reductions in cardiovascular disease and cancer deaths. And life span inched up - by weeks - for the second straight year, according to death certificate data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But life span for 2020 could finish up dropping up to three full years, said Robert Anderson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC counted 2,854,838 U.S. deaths this past year, or practically 16,000 more than 2018. That’s fairly very good news: Deaths usually rise by about 20,000 to 50,000 every year, mainly as a result of nation’s aging, and growing, population.
Indeed, the age-adjusted death rate dropped about 1% in 2019, and life span rose by about six weeks to 78.8 years, the CDC reported.
“It was actually a pretty good year for mortality, as things go,” said Anderson, who oversees CDC death statistics.
The U.S. coronavirus epidemic has been a major driver of deaths this season, both directly and indirectly.
The virus was initially identified in China last year, and the first U.S. cases were reported this season. But it has become the third leading cause of death, behind only cardiovascular disease and cancer. For certain periods this year, COVID-19 was the No. 1 killer.
But some other types of deaths also have increased.
A burst of pneumonia cases early this season may have been COVID-19 deaths that simply weren’t recognized as such early in the epidemic. But there likewise have been an urgent number of deaths from certain types of heart and circulatory diseases, diabetes and dementia, Anderson said.
A lot of those, too, may be related to COVID. The virus could have weakened patients already struggling with those conditions, or could have diminished the care these were getting, he said.
Early in the epidemic, some were optimistic that motor vehicle accident deaths would drop as persons stopped commuting or driving to social events. Data on that's not yet in, but anecdotal reports recommend there is no such decline.
Suicide deaths dropped in 2019 compared with 2018, but early information suggests they have not continued to drop this year, Anderson and others said.
Drug overdose deaths, meanwhile, got much worse.
Prior to the coronavirus even arrived, the U.S. was amid the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in its history.
Data for most of 2020 isn't yet available. But the other day the CDC reported more than 81,000 drug overdose deaths in the 12 months ending in May, making it the best number ever recorded in a one-year period.
Experts think the pandemic’s disruption to in-person treatment and recovery services might have been a factor. People are also much more likely to be taking drugs alone - without the benefit of a friend or relative who can call 911 or administer overdose-reversing medication.
But perhaps a bigger factor will be the drugs themselves: COVID-19 caused supply problems for dealers, so they are increasingly mixing cheap and deadly fentanyl into heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, experts said.
“I don’t suspect there are a bunch of new people who suddenly started using drugs because of COVID. If anything, I think the supply of individuals who already are using drugs is more contaminated,” said Shannon Monnat, a Syracuse University researcher who studies drug overdose trends.
