When Covid 19 infections began to be publicized in the United States in March, we had little data to understand this virus except whatever reports came from China. Even by late April, many states outside of New York had little internal data to assess the impact this virus would have in their locale. The early absence of data led to widely varying opinions on the virus, and individual behavior varied with the absence of local government guidance.
In November 2020 after eight months, all states in the US and many countries have firsthand experience with higher than normal hospital ICU admissions. Behavior has become more normalized as the US has adapted to living with this virus until vaccination becomes widespread. However, opinions still vary with regards to the lethality of Covid-19.
Method
This purpose of this article is to take an objective approach to analyze deaths reported by the CDC. More specifically this article examines deaths due to natural cause across the United States to investigate the impact of the virus across all age groups and for millenials. Death counts are based on received and coded records received by the CDC by November 25, 2020. This work analyzes death counts to minimize debate over subjectivity with the Covid diagnoses. Deaths due to natural cause also removes non-viral causes such as drug overdoses correlated with the increased economic hardship or lockdowns. Data is downloaded from the National Center for Health Statistics at the following link: https://data.cdc.gov/browse?category=NCHS&sortBy=most_accessed . Plots are created using Plotly and embedded using the Plotly Chart Studio. Note that some plots below have axes titles which will appear after selecting the plot.
Weekly Deaths for All Age Cohorts
A review of the deaths by natural cause indicates that the United States experienced a peak 46% increase in weekly deaths due to natural causes with 73,981 in 2020 versus 50,799 in 2019 in mid-April. Texas experienced a peak 76% increase in weekly deaths due to natural causes with 5,887 in 2020 versus 3,349 in 2019 in late July. The Deaths by Natural Cause demonstrates the mortality of Covid across all age cohorts. No other natural cause besides Covid-19 can explain these deaths, and the deaths correlate with commonly known timing of reported spikes in United States Covid-19 related deaths.
Figure 1. Weekly deaths by natural cause in the United States shows a primary peak in mid-April and a secondary peak in mid-July.
Note that the Weekly Deaths by Natural Cause decreases during the summer months in 2019 which is typical. This may be attributed at least partly due to the influenza virus and pneumonia which is more prevalent in winter months. The Weekly Deaths by Natural Cause increases during the summer months in 2020.
Figure 2. Weekly deaths by natural cause in Texas shows a primary peak in late-July and remain elevated since the peak.
Note that the excess deaths shown in Figure 2 as the 2020 counts above the 2019 counts under counts Covid-19 lethality compared to the 2019 baseline. The United States has undergone historic measures both voluntary and involuntary to reduce viral spread, and typical cases of other respiratory infections is expected to be lower. Analyzing and verifying a decrease in other respiratory infections is left for a future post.
Monthly Deaths for 25-34 Year Olds
Another question is the extent to which Covid is causing deaths in the 25-34 year old cohort which includes the most millenials. A plot of monthly deaths by natural cause for this cohort indicates increasing deaths throughout 2020 culminating in a peak 83% increase in monthly deaths due to natural causes with 3,008 in October 2020 versus 1,636 in October 2019. Note that the baseline death rate for 25-34 year olds remains relatively low. For comparison, the October monthly deaths due to natural causes for 65-74 year olds was 44,360 in 2019.
Figure 3. Monthly deaths by natural cause in the United States for the 25-34 year old cohort shows increasing rates throughout October 2020.
The classification for many of these excess deaths in 2020 compared to 2019 among the 25-34 year old cohort is classified as “Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified R00-R99.” This classification may be due to the R99 classification being used for “pending Covid-19 testing” as described here: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-ICD-code-introduced-for-COVID-19-deaths.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2XckyC93jfKqvOue5EdPlNA8LlKKgz4vPZTU1whI4vXLSOADSjsL9XY-M. The excess deaths for 25-34 year olds is following a pattern of exponential increase through October 2020.
Figure 4. Monthly deaths (R00-R99) in the United States for the 25-34 year old cohort demonstrates an exponential increase throughout 2020 to date.
Comparing the 25-34 year old cohort with older age cohorts in October 2020 shows that the deaths by natural cause are approaching the same order of magnitude as older ages possibly due to higher viral load. The deaths for the 25-34 year old cohort has reached 61% of deaths for the 55-64 year old cohort with 1,372 for 25-34 year olds and 2,237 for 55-64 year olds.
We can assume that the exponential increase in excess deaths during the Covid pandemic among 25-34 year olds is due to changing behavior in this demographic in 2020. One cannot blame them without considering that this cohort is more likely than older cohorts to work in service industry jobs that are customer facing. The cohort also has more need to socialize outside of a family bubble compared to older cohorts. However, this data shows that younger Millenials and older Gen-Z members are not immune to Covid-19 related mortality and in fact have increased their chances of death by 83% on average, and those in this generation with least careful behavior must have increased their rated of death by natural cause even higher. This serves as a warning not to take the virus too lightly despite their age.