The Ignored 86,000 - RIP

It would be an understatement to say that I've been watching the CoViD-19 case and death data, it's more like obsessing over it.  But this past Friday (in order to write a comment over on KT's blog), I actually did a quick analysis of then current CDC data for 'excess deaths' during the CoViD-19 epidemic.   To be blunt I was shocked to find out the excess deaths added up to 251,257 (for the time period March 25 - August 11).  I was shocked because the total deaths attributed to CoViD-19 (again by CDC) on the last day covered by that data was only 165,148 [NOTE: I actually quoted 201,000 over on KT's blog, but I had not taken into account that the excess death data wasn't through September 16, but more than 5 weeks sooner on Aug 11!].  That's why I'm saying that there are over 86,000 excess deaths that are unaccounted for.  That my friends is more than 34% of the total excess.

What has caused all these deaths, and why is no one talking about them?

In my comment I suggested that the causes might be 

"the unintended consequence of the lockdowns/economic strangulation (suicide, domestic abuse, or maybe even people not being able/willing to get proper medical care for other conditions jump to my mind as possibilities)."

So over the last couple of days I have searched obsessively for any data to try to figure out if any or all of these causes might explain such a large number of deaths.  Let's take them one at a time.

For suicides the latest data I could find on the CDC site was through 2017 (worthless!).  I did manage to find a couple of data points.  In an online article they state that

"The spike in suicides in Cook County is especially pronounced in the Black community, which has already seen 58 suicides this year, according to the medical examiner’s office. That outpaces 56 from all of 2019 and 33 during the same time period last year."

 and

"In June, Fresno reported 17 suicide deaths in one month, the highest number in almost three years and up from 10 in June 2019."

Those work out to 'excesses'  of 75% and 70%, respectively.  Of course they are ridiculously small to be used for any kind of extrapolation, but if we do, we'd expect a rise of something like 0.75*47,000*0.5 (the 47,000 is suicides last year, and the 0.5 is to account for the data only covering about a half year), which works out to about 17,600.  While that's a big number, it would only explain about 20% of the excess deaths.

For domestic abuse I could not find any hard numbers of fatalities.  There have been numbers for increases in things like calls reporting domestic abuse, inquiries to safe homes, and the like that range from 20% to 50%, with a almost unbelievable 150% rise in "visits to the refuge website" (see here).  Although these are despicable results, it turns out that the estimate of annual deaths is only 1,000 - 1,600.  So unless the numbers have grown far more than any reasonable estimate this simply can't account for more than 3,000 'excess' deaths.

Trying to assign a number of current deaths from the third possible cause, deferred medical care, is hopeless.  There was a nice study in the Lancet which attempted to figure out haw many people would die prematurely over the next five years and the total years of life lost (YLL) would be in England.  The data are distressing to say the least.  Bottom line, they think that a good estimate of total YLL is about 60,000.  That's for England (population 56 million).  We can (completely without justification) say that projects to 350 million years of life lost here in the US.

So it is currently impossible for me to explain the 86,000 excess deaths reported by the CDC which are over and above the CoViD-19 excess deaths.  Nonetheless I do believe that there truly are nearly 86,000 people who have died in the US, who should not have died, and whose deaths must be attributed to the pernicious unintended consequence of the lockdowns.  Further, the lockdowns have been held on so long (in blue states), that truly long lasting economic consequences are going to cause these unintended consequences to last far beyond whenever the lockdowns finally end (if they end?).  

It is my belief that the 'cure' has become worse than the disease, and that the time is past to end the lockdowns.