Was covid-19 mortality “anticipated”?

It’s some music that is gaining ground, week after week: since covid-19 mainly kills the elderly, there would be no excessive long-term mortality, just “a little premature” deaths. Furthermore, the excess mortality due to covid-19 would have been offset by a decrease due to other causes (decrease in road accidents, etc.). What is it really? The point in numbers.

It’s a fact: according to data from Public Health France, the average age of deaths from covid-19 is 84 years. That is, half of the deceased patients were over 84, the other half were younger.

Aged dead, but not only

Of the 55,000 deaths due to covid, half are therefore the oldest 2.3% of the population (1.6 million people). And the other half is the youngest, representing 97.7% of the French, or 65.5 million people.

Of the 37,500 people who died from covid in hospital (about two thirds of deaths), 35,000 were 60 years old and over. An overwhelming majority.

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But more than 6,000 (almost 17% of the total) were under the age of 70: this is a big difference from the flu, which only exceptionally kills such “young” people.

Of these 6,067 people, 4,089 were aged between 60 and 69, 1,395 died between 50 and 59, 401 between 40 and 49, 139 between 30 and 39, 33 between 20 and 29 years. And also 5 between 10 and 19 years and 4 children under 9 years. The flu can be fatal for very young children with a high fever, but it is extremely rare for an adult in their prime.

In addition to this, influenza kills between 0.1 and 0.5% of infected patients depending on the year, versus 0.5-1.5% of patients with covid-19 (3 ​​to 15 times more), waiting to have a sufficient perspective on the epidemic for more precise data.

Covid mortality therefore affects the age groups usually most spared from such infections. Even in the presence of possible comorbidities (diabetes, heart problems, overweight …), most of these patients who died “young” would have lived a priori for many more years.

No recovery, no compensation

Another graph shows very clearly the excess mortality due to covid, which – so far – has not been overcome by lower mortality in the following weeks or months, nor mitigated by a decline in deaths from other causes.

These curves show the daily deaths – all causes – for the years 2018, 2019 and 2020, between March 1 and November 23 (latest consolidated data for 2020). We can distinguish the two peaks of spring and autumn very clearly.

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They also correspond to the daily deaths due to covid (in hospital), to which must be added the deaths in nursing homes, which do not provide data every day. But that represent about a third of the total.

A strong and evident excess of mortality

Have we seen periods of lower mortality occur at these “spikes”, which would corroborate the hypothesis of death simply occurring a little earlier than without the covid? No.

And the declines in deaths from other causes, such as road accidents, during the two blocks, do not compensate for the sharp increase recorded.

And for good reason: when it comes to road deaths, there are fewer than ten a day on average. Too little to bend a curve that shows 1,500 to 1,700 deaths every day in France, from all causes.

Too little even to “remedy” the hundreds of daily deaths from covid. And it is the same for the other alleged causes (accidents at work …) of “declining” death: the orange curve never shows a “deficit” of mortality, or a recovery of peaks.

On the other hand, we can clearly distinguish these two “covid” peaks, which have added to the statistics of several hundred deaths every day for long weeks.

Over the course of the year, excess mortality is still expected to show an increase of more than 10%, with 65-70,000 deaths from covid in 2020. Obviously, these people would die someday, and a recovery over time. sure. But we will never know, on the whole, if they have lost a few weeks of life, or long years.

In the worst moments of the outbreak, covid was responsible for a third of deaths in France. Without decreasing deaths from other causes.