The Failure of Public Health

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the goal of public health is to prevent disease, promote health, and prolong life among the population as a whole. 

The best indicator of the success of public health measures is measured by the increase in life expectancies.

Over the last century or so public health initiatives have been credited with increasing the life expectancies of U.S. citizens by over 30 years.

Life Expectancy (from birth) in the United States (1860-2020)
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040079/life-expectancy-united-states-all-time/

Much of this has been due to better sanitation practices, safer water supplies and a reduction in child mortality. 

Overall life expectancy is affected much more by deaths in the young than those who are older and closer to their life expectancies. 

In the chart above, you can see the decrease in life expectancy in the 1860-1865 period due to the Civil War.

There was also a decrease in the 1915-1920 period due to World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic that principally affected young people.

Interestingly, overall life expectancy did not  fall during World War II and Vietnam despite the large number of deaths in young soldiers. 

As you can see from the CDC chart below, there have been more deaths from Covid in the 85+ age group than any other.

Over half of the deaths are in those over age 75.

Three-fourths of Covid deaths have been among those age 65 or older.

Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#demographics

You can see that Covid deaths for anyone below age 30 is almost invisible on the chart.

In 2019, the average life expectancy in the United States was nearly79.

By the end of 2021, it was 76.

That is the largest drop in life expectancy in over 100 years.

Source: https://boingboing.net/2022/08/31/us-life-expectancy-continues-to-fall-in-a-historic-drop.html

From a New York Times story on this data.

In 2021, the average American could expect to live until the age of 76, federal health researchers reported on Wednesday. The figure represents a loss of almost three years since 2019, when Americans could expect to live, on average, nearly 79 years.

In 2021, the shortening of life span was more pronounced among white Americans than among Black Americans, who saw greater reductions in the first year of the pandemic.

There is no question that Covid deaths had an effect on the drop in life expectancy.

However, deaths among people around the life expectancy numbers should not materially decrease the average number by 2-3 years over the course of a couple years.

That can only occur when there are a number of deaths of individuals at ages well below the life expectancy average. This is what occurred in the Civil War, World War I and Spanish Flu pandemic. We can see from the CDC data above that there have been very few deaths among those below age 50 from Covid.

What then has caused the overall life expectancy to drop so dramatically in a couple of years?

The CDC has done an analysis for 2020 and 2021 in which it attributed cause-specific death rates and their effects on life expectancy.

A large negative number means that cause of death had a significant effect on lowering overall life expectancy in that period. A high positive number indicates that this cause of death was actually less prevalent between the two years and had the effect of increasing overall life expectancy.

Between 2019 and 2020, the CDC attributed 74% of the decrease factors lowering overall life expectancy as being due to Covid. However, this was offset by much fewer deaths than expected from Cancer (46% of the positive contribution) and Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease (CLRD) (21%).

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr015-508.pdf

Does it make sense that cancer and CLRD deaths could drop that much in a year to positively effect life expectancy?

Were some of what would normally have been classified as cancer or CLRD deaths called Covid deaths?

Were some of these conditions simply missed in 2020 because of lockdowns?

The data comparing the loss of one year of overall life expectancy between 2020 and 2021 is particularly interesting.

Bear in mind this is after a year of Covid lockdowns and an aggressive Covid vaccination effort that continued throughout 2021 

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr023.pdf

The CDC attributes only half of the decrease in life expectancy reductions to Covid.

Unintentional injuries (drug overdoses, accidents, drownings, etc) caused 16% of the reduction.

A massive 25% is due to Residual causes that do not fit into an easy category. In the previous year, Residual was only 7%.

As to positive effects on life expectancy, it appears that deaths from influenza and pneumonia fell off a cliff in 2021.

Did what were previously flu and pneumonia deaths just become Covid deaths in 2021?

For the second consecutive year we also saw a reduction in Respiratory deaths. Did those deaths also end up classified as Covid deaths?

Deaths from Alzheimer's deaths also fell. Why would these deaths fall so dramatically in one year? Did some of these deaths also get counted as Covid deaths?

With so many deaths in the Residual category that resulted in deaths that lowered overall life expectancy, is it possible that the vaccines might be responsible for causing excess deaths (especially in younger age groups below age 65)?

I don't know the answer to these questions.

The only thing I know for sure is that the dramatic decrease in life expectancy is a massive indictment of the public health establishment.

Dealing with Covid is one thing.

However, the total focus on Covid to the exclusion of all other possible public health implications was totally irresponsible.

We are now seeing the full effects of that tunnel vision.

Medical conditions worsened by delayed treatment. Mental health conditions. Drug overdoses. Suicides. Homicides. Possible adverse effects from the vaccines.

Add to this what we are finding out about the damage done to schoolchildren due to the school closures.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/national-test-scores-math-reading-pandemic.html

Of course, many are now saying none of these effects were foreseeable.

Who could have known?

I warned about those possible implications in these pages on April 12, 2020. 

I was concerned that Dr. Fauci and others were not considering the longer-term effects of what the lockdowns would have on the economy and other factors affecting public health.

I also have a hard time in understanding how Dr. Fauci can stand up at those press conferences and say that his sole focus is on health recommendations to the President. He is being charged with overseeing the public health of the United States. Yes, that includes the nation's short term response to the virus. However, how do public health concerns also not extend to the longer term implications of the economic shutdown.

He says he is not an economist. In my view, it is not enough for him to say that it is not his concern. There is a public health component in that as well that he should be considering and weighing in his recommendations.

In May of 2020 I also wrote that the risks to children were much greater in not being in the classroom than any risks that they had from Covid.

I expressed my concern as to what this was going to do to those children who were already behind in educational skills, especially those from minority and low-income communities.

These children were already seriously behind before we stopped them from attending in-person classes. 

Did these children even have a laptop and internet connection to attend school? Did they have any type of parental support at home to supervise and support their online learning? 

It all looked like a looming disaster to me.

Of course, most of the teacher's unions (with the support of the public health establishment) lobbied to keep the schools closed to in-person instruction.

The failure of public health over the last 2-1/2 years is unprecedented in human history.

The actions of our public health authorities borders on gross negligence.

Look no further than the life expectancy numbers.

If it was not bad enough that they got almost everything wrong in their Covid response.

In the process, those errors were then compounded by making a whole lot of other issues worse as well.

Will anyone be held accountable?

Is anyone in the public bureaucracy ever held accountable?