I’m not saying it is the only reason to collect data. Only that the UK government stopped collecting it and i suggested that as the reason.
Conspiracy theorist will conspiracy, anti vaxxers will anti vax, and all the rest of us will behave rationally. At some point covid blends into the background as a cause of death. I guess it comes down to how determined you are to separate excess deaths trends into causes. That’s really important for the SOA and life actuaries to understand, so they get to deal with the problem instead.
Isn’t it easier for the government to blame covid than to attribute it to other causes?
I guess you are on the anti vax train and are suggesting these are vaccine related.
This has a chart on excess mortality and vaccine coverage with no observable correlation.
If i were to offer my own speculation, covid killed the weakest, and made the weak more vulnerable. The stress on the body of dealing with the virus likely has longer term outcomes that are not understood and difficult to measure. I suspect every respiratory virus causes some long term tissue damage for adults. Most of them negligible, but if each case of influenza shaves of a few months of life at the end, would that at all be surprising?
I think the excess future mortality of covid survivors is more due to its impact on the cardiovascular system, immune system, and brain than on its damage to the respiratory system. I know several people who died of a heart attack or stoke not too long after recovering from covid, and VA studies say that increased risk is statistically significant.
(Look at the linked studies for stats, but this article is highly readable.)
Yes, I was not thinking it was specific to respiratory system, just that any virus that makes you feel like shit even if it is considered primarily a respiratory virus could be causing damage we do not understand.
Thank you for the article. I’m here in part to learn.
I guess I’m anti vax given the redefinition during the Covid era. Never mind that I’ve had many vaccines over the years. I elected to not take this one based on my personal risk benefit assessment so I’m on the anti vax train. Just go with that.
I’m curious as to your thoughts on the Novavax vaccine. The FDA was extremely slow to approve it, mostly because they apparently felt “we have enough vaccines on the market”. But it’s a traditional protein+adjuvant vaccine, and I believe it is available in the US, finally.
ETA: Yeah, I found it at Costco, a local supermarket, and several state-run clinics near me.
It is more based on the several posts you have made with speculative claims about vaccine “unknowns”. You are seeking evidence to validate your decision by pointing to unexplained excess mortality. I do hope you are here in part to learn. Maybe the anti vax label was harsh, but your pattern of arguments is consistent with what known anti vaxxers on Twitter amplify.
The world of quick moving partial bits of information the internet can provide has made the covid vaccine debate political because of how easy emotion is to leverage.
I remember having a fear that Trump was going to try and force vaccines to be approved ahead of the election for political gain. That didn’t happen. The timing of EUA between the election and Biden taking over really should have eliminated as much of the politics from the approval as possible, but i think we all need to recognize that with everything else that transpired around election claims, that the timing also created resentment among Trump supporters who wanted initially to see him get more credit for the vaccine and win the election.
There are a lot of motivations out there on both sides, and a lot of bad information available on covid in general. You have taken a lot of other vaccines, i assume including the annual flu vaccine. Most of these vaccines are against diseases that the vast majority of people with recover from without any long term effects. Each represents a small, incremental increase in life expectancy across the population. Over the last century, these have helped add many years to an average life. The covid vaccine really is just a new part of that.
Anyway, you mentioned already having had covid. There are good studies out there that show continued incremental benefits from covid vaccines, including boosters. One thing that i have found lacking is the benefit for those who have had covid. I had covid last year, and was on the fence on getting the latest booster. I went ahead and got it because I could time dealing with any side effects (that didn’t end up happening) much better than another round of covid during the holidays. Plus, having covid wasnt a fun 3-4 days, so it seemed worth getting on the end.
Whereas I’ve sought out vaccines that weren’t actively recommended to me, but were available. And been told “no” sometimes when it turns out a vaccine wasn’t available. (The HPV vaccine keeps getting approved for older and older people, but always below my age. I haven’t been exposed, which is unusual for a person as old as i am, but not rare, so it could be helpful. But i guess it hasn’t been tested in people this old, yet.)
Analysts at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services believe that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the deaths of many older Americans who were already sick and were already on track to die within the next five years.
The death acceleration effect was big enough to account for a big drop in fee-for-service Medicare enrollees’ use of hospital services in 2022, according to Paul Spitalnic, the CMS chief actuary.
Traditional Medicare program enrollees’ inpatient spending in 2022 was 8.7% below the level projected before the pandemic began, and CMS believes that pandemic-related acceleration of the deaths of older people with underlying health problems accounted for about 3.4% of the spending gap, Spitalnic reported.
Spitalnic talked about the CMS hospital spending analysis on May 16, during a webinar the American Academy of Actuaries Health Practice Council held to brief actuaries on Medicare’s finances.
There was gossip that one of the reasons China chose to open up the way they did was that its leadership thought a lot of covid deaths among the elderly would help China’s demographic issues.
