This year cannot end soon enough:
This is the deadliest year in U.S. history, with deaths expected to top 3 million for the first time — due mainly to the coronavirus pandemic.
Final mortality data for this year will not be available for months. But preliminary numbers suggest that the United States is on track to see more than 3.2 million deaths this year, or at least 400,000 more than in 2019.
U.S. deaths increase most years, so some annual rise in fatalities is expected. But the 2020 numbers amount to a jump of about 15%, and could go higher once all the deaths from this month are counted
That would mark the largest single-year percentage leap since 1918, when tens of 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, compared with 1917.
COVID-19 has killed more than 318,000 Americans and counting. Before it came along, there was reason to be hopeful about U.S. death trends.
The nation’s overall mortality rate fell a bit in 2019, due to reductions in heart disease and cancer deaths. And life expectancy inched up — by several weeks — for the second straight year, according to death certificate data released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But life expectancy for 2020 could end up dropping as much as three full years, said Robert Anderson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The way things are going, I’m sorry to say that the first few months of 2021 are going to be even worse. An awful lot of people have just decided to say “fuck it, I’m ignoring this thing” amd many of them are asymptomatic and are spreading it all over the place. It’s just a nightmare.
If you didn’t happen to see the recent CNN Special Report on the 1918 pandemic, it’s really worth watching. You can see it here. Let’s just say we haven’t learned much in the last 100 years. Sure the science is much improved. But the public is just as skeptical and uncooperative. I suspect that people will refuse to take these things seriously until we get one of those “Contagion” type of pandemic where people just drop dead by the millions. We don’t seem to be able to grasp the idea that it’s not just about whether we personally want to take the risk, but that we are capable of giving it to other people who are susceptible or have no choice. It’s really a moral question. And a whole lot of people have failed, I’m afraid.
It’s Happy Hollandaise time. If you’re of a mind to drop something in the old Hullabaloo Christmas stocking, you can do so below.
cheers,
digby