“A national scandal”: Us excess deaths also rose after pandemic, far beyond the Peer countries

Excess deaths in the United States also rose after the climax of Covid-19 pandemic, whereby more than 1.5 million in 2022 and 2023 would have been prevented if the US mortality rates matched the peer countries, a University of Boston (BU) estimates. study today in Jama Health Forum.

The data show a continuation of a decades of trends to increase US excess deaths, mainly in adults of working age, which were largely driven by overdoses of drugs, weapons, auto accidents and avoidable cardiometabolic causes, according to the researchers.

“The United States has been in a protracted health crisis for decades, whereby health results are far worse than other countries with high incomes,” said the senior and corresponding author Jacob Bor, SCD, in a BU Press release. “This longer tragedy continued to develop in the shadow of the Covid 19 pandemic.”

The United States' mortality rates left slower from 1980

The investigators analyzed total data in the United States and 21 other countries with high incomes (HICS) in the database of human mortality from January 1980 to December 2023. They calculated the annual age -specific mortality rates for the United States and the population -weight average of other HICs.

In the United States, the mortality rates between 1980 and 2019 decreased more slowly in the United States than in other countries with high incomes (HICS), which led to a growing number of excess US deaths compared to other HICs.

The team counted the number of US deaths that had expected every year if the country had experienced the age-specific mortality rates of other HICs, calculated conditions of observed deaths in the United States and estimated the number of excess deaths that can be attributed to the detriment of US mortality. They fit into a linear regression model to determine whether the number of excess US deaths was prepared in 2023 from 2014 to 2019.

“In the United States, the mortality rates in the United States took slower than in other countries with high incomes (HICS) between 1980 and 2019, which led to a growing number of excess US deaths compared to other HICs,” the authors of the study noticed.

Evaluated more than double comparable countries in young adults

From 1980 to 2023, 107.5 million people died in the United States, and 230.2 million people did this with other HICs. During this period, an estimated 14.7 million US deaths in the United States performed and reached a climax in 2021 during the Covid 19 pandemic.

Nevertheless, there were still more than 1.5 million excess deaths in 2022 and 2023, and the rates remained significantly increased compared to those before pandemic. Other Hics saw less pronounced pandemeous lutes.

The gaps between the United States and other Hics widened before and during pandemic, especially among younger adults, before they shrank in 2022 and 2023. 2023.

Deep cuts into public health, which will probably expand inequality

Excess deaths, which are due to the disadvantage of the US mortality, reached 1 million and 1.1 million in 2021 in 2020 and 2021 before they went back to 820,396 and 705,331 to 820,396 in 2022. This number followed four decades with increasing surplus, and reached 631,247 in 2023. 46.0% of people among people under the age of 65.