Tuesday, May 26, 2020

15 Average Years of Life Lost for each COVID-19 death

The following is a very rough estimate, which would be subject to refinement or correction, but I believe it is reasonably accurate.  

Here are some calculations to show approximate average years of life lost for each COVID-19 death in the population.  They are based on mortality statistics of COVID-19 deaths, 
which shows that about 49% of people dying were age 75+ (each of whom lost 6 years of life on average); 25% of people dying were ages 65-75 (each of whom lost about 15 years of life on average); 22% of people dying were ages 45-64 (each of whom lost about 30 years of life on average), 4% of people dying were ages 18-44 (each of whom lost about 55 years of life on average), and 0.05% of people dying were younger than 18 (each of whom lost about 70 years of life on average).  

Therefore the average years of life lost for each COVID-19 death is 
(0.49 * 6) + (0.25 * 15) + (0.22 * 30) + (0.04 * 55) + (.0005 * 70) = 15.525

So each COVID-19 death in the population leads to an average loss of 15 years of life.

The calculation is based on tables of COVID-19 deaths by age, all of which give quite similar numbers, combined with life expectancy tables (in this case from Statistics Canada).  


The US population therefore, in just 4 months time has had about 1.5 million years of life lost from COVID-19 (probably an underestimate), which is about as many years of life lost as from all the murders in the US in 2 years' time.

Reference for murder YLL statistics: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5607680/





Update:  through the course of 2020, there were about 375 000 COVID-related deaths in the US, representing over 4 million years of life lost, which is a similar impact on the population as 
all of the murders in over 5 years' time.  
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