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This is the cycle of life. Each year, about 43,000 Louisians shuffle this mortal coil, or take it, and the vast majority of them die from natural causes.
But 2020 was different. The number of deaths recorded in the state has risen by nearly a third, a historic and unprecedented shift. More than 56,000 Louisians lost their lives.
The grim data brings the lie to the argument that the coronavirus is similar to a bad flu. The coronavirus was the primary culprit in the massive increase in deaths: About 7,800 people died of COVID-19 in Louisiana by the dawn of the new year, and the first known death occurred only in mid-March.
But at the same time, another 5,000 excess deaths – 40% of the total – cannot be cured by the virus – in any case not directly. Even if COVID deaths were not counted, many more Louisians die than in a normal year, although the virus probably played a supporting role.
All in all, there are now 12,802 fewer living Louisians than might be expected from the trends of the past year, a population larger than that of Mandeville in the St. Louis area. Tammany Parish.
“Many people who are skeptical about COVID and the impact of COVID argue that deaths are overestimated,” said Mark VanLandingham, a professor at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. “I feel really confident that even (this analysis) will underestimate the real impact of COVID.”
Louisiana’s experience follows the national picture. According to the US Centers for Disease Control, between 493,600 and approximately 610,000 excess deaths have occurred since the beginning of the pandemic, with between 60,000 and 158,000 not directly attributable to the coronavirus.
A dramatic increase in deaths began to steam when the state halted the first wave of coronavirus in March, suggesting that the pandemic itself played a role, even though the virus was not listed on every death certificate.
The latest scores, based on preliminary data from the Louisiana Department of Health, point to a complex web of causes of death that should close the black-and-white debates over whether the state should shut down the pandemic or its opening doors, complicating. prevent depression from taking toll.
A sharp increase in deaths due to natural causes, for example, indicates that the fear that the health care system would be overwhelmed, and that all steps must be taken to enable a rapid return to normal medical care. At the same time, many of the deaths apparently come from those who could not or did not seek care in that crisis. And it appears from a sharp increase in drug overdose deaths that would have caused the pandemic to worry that the so-called ‘death of despair’ was equally prophetic.
And even if the pandemic is under better control in Louisiana again, experts remain concerned that its impact will continue and eventually be unrecognizable. Researchers are likely to spend years shaving off the years that spared lives from missed cancer screenings, analyzing what led people to pick up a syringe and measuring the subtle ways health can be relentless from month to month of relentless stress. relieved.
“I do not think we understand it well,” said Patricia Kissinger, an epidemiologist at Tulane University. “Like Katrina, we will never know the echo effects.”
Louisiana dies in 2020: Coroners group causes of death into five main categories; a number of them jumped dramatically in 2020. The coronavirus is only slightly more than half of the total increase.
Excluding COVID, the category of deaths that had by far the largest number jump in 2020 were deaths due to other natural causes. The reasons for this are murky, but data and anecdotal evidence suggest that many people died from other causes because they did not receive medical care due to serious conditions, either for fear of the virus or because the care was not available.
The deviations of 2020 do not stop there. Pathologists usually group deaths into four broad categories – of course, accident, homicide and suicide – with a small fifth group including cases where the mode of death remains indefinite.
“You have to go back to World War II, the 1940s, to find a decline like this.”
Natural deaths are the norm and consist of the vast majority of deaths: in most years it is 90% or more. As a result, most of the increase was in this category.
Even if deaths are set aside, the state officially counts as a result of coronavirus, other natural causes – cancer, disease and chronic conditions – killed more than 3,700 additional people last year. This is an increase of 9.4% and almost half of the toll that can be directly attributed to the virus.
Some of those who died may have been killed by the virus and never properly diagnosed, although coroners say it is a relatively rare occurrence as tests are not as difficult to obtain as in the first months of the disease.
The state is still compiling the details of the mortality rates of the last months of 2020, so the specific diseases that killed the people remain somewhat unclear. But serious and chronic diseases seem to have played a major role.
Officials have warned of the need not to stand in the way of the necessary medical care pandemic, and health departments are concerned that people are being prevented from going to doctor visits or calling 9-1-1 until it was too late for fear of the virus.
The coronavirus is going to take people away from care that otherwise, if they were not in a pandemic, would get the necessary care for a worsening condition, “VanLandingham said.” But they are slow to go to the doctor and see people. ‘
For example, in the first nine months of 2020, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease each killed more people than would be expected over the course of an entire year, based on average mortality rates over the past year. Heart disease and Alzheimer’s probably also significantly exceeded their expected toll.
Public health officials have largely accepted that Mardi Gras helped make New Orleans an early coronavirus hotspot in the US last year.
Worrying: although malnutrition remains a relatively rare cause of death, it appears to be on the rise. Nutrition deficits were listed in 2020 as the cause of death for nearly 300 people in the state, a whopping 50% increase from the average of previous years.
More directly, it appears that deaths due to respiratory diseases, which may reflect undiagnosed cases of COVID, would exceed in recent years.
Louisiana’s statistics largely reflect national trends.
Accidental deaths are usually the second largest category after natural deaths, and in recent years, amid the national opioid epidemic, drug overdose has been the biggest factor. Accidental deaths in Louisiana increased by almost a third worldwide by 2020, as Louisiana’s lethal overdose rate rose faster than that of any other state.
Louisiana saw the country’s strongest increase in drug deaths between 2019 and 2020
But the burden is not evenly distributed. The though high death toll from drug overdose deaths in East Baton Rouge, for example, nearly doubled in 2020. The overdose jumped by half in Jefferson Parish. Many other congregations have had smaller increases, although almost no congregation in the state has the number of accidents.
Murders, meanwhile, account for a small fraction of the total deaths in Louisiana, although Louisiana has the country’s highest murder rate for three decades in a row. The state was not immune to the increase in violence seen in the U.S. by 2020, with more than 850 people killed. This is 45% more than in the past few years.
Due to the tension of the pandemic, suicide in Louisiana has dropped slightly over the course of the year. However, suicide determinations can take longer than other death investigations, and some officials are reluctant to declare that someone has taken their own life, and only when the intention is crystal clear.
As the coronavirus pandemic tore through Louisiana, the rising death toll has become a sad but well-known statistic.
Sober as it is, last year’s figures may be just the beginning. Experts warn that the lingering effects of the pandemic, and the uncertain long-term effects of the virus itself, could be felt for years to come.
“It’s uncharted water,” VanLandingham said. ‘There may be many premature deaths in the future for people who got it. We just do not know. ”
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