Covid and life expectancy

How much life expectancy has been lost to Covid itself? How much life expectancy has been lost, and harm caused by the shutdown lockdown mitigation approach? Sweden for example saw this dilemma very early on an chose to not shut down and lock down.

Much of the Media in a veritable panic continues to blare “200,000 Americans have died from Covid!”.  Is that true?  Does that headline need context?  Does that headline cause more harm than help?

The key public health metric is life expectancy. Natural life expectancy or life span, is averaged for a population but varies by individual, their genetics and how well they managed their own health.  Public health is charged with helping a population maximize or realize their natural expected life span.

One study of 50,000 college students in the US revealed 2 hospitalizations and 0 deaths.
265,000,000 world wide are facing starvation including many children from covid lockdowns and shutdowns.
Research shows that a child pushed into poverty loses 15 years of life expectancy.

If an 80 year old, with a natural life expectancy of 72 years today, is suddenly lost to any pathogen, society gained 8 years.  From a public health perspective, none was lost at all.

A big win!  And most everyone says he/she led a good life, maybe a great life. Had a chance to marry, attend college, see their kids graduate from college and so on.

“What is the average life expectancy of someone in a nursing home [before Covid]?

The average length of stay before death was 13.7 months, while the median was five months. Fifty-three percent of nursing home residents in the study died within six months. Men died after a median stay of three months, while women died after a median stay of eight months.”

Now, lose a 5 year old to the flu (for example) and society has LOST 95 years of life expectancy. Not to mention the emotional grief for everyone, not just relatives and friends.

A devastating loss.

Covid, the virus itself, is not the problem.  The possible bout of ARDS from the body fighting the virus is.  But only a tiny fraction of a fraction of the populace is at risk. The very elderly with serious co-morbidities are the only group with a significant statistical chance of a bad outcome from contracting Covid-19.

“In 1968, at the height of the last great influenza pandemic, at least a million people worldwide died, including 100,000 Americans. That year A.M.M. Payne, a professor of epidemiology at Yale University, wrote:”

In the conquest of Mount Everest anything less than 100% success is failure, but in most communicable diseases we are not faced with the attainment of such absolute goals, but rather with trying to reduce the problem to tolerable levels, as quickly as possible, within the limits of available resources…