Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q1SCBUMcCk&ab_channel=meepsmathmatters
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Author(s): Mary Pat Campbell
Publication Date: 1 April 2021
Publication Site: Meep’s Math Matters on Youtube
Tag: CDC
The Leading Causes of Death in the US for 2020
Link: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778234
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The provisional number of deaths occurring in the US among US residents in 2020 was 3 358 814, an increase of 503 976 (17.7%) from 2 854 838 in 2019 (Table). Historic trends in mortality show seasonality in the number of deaths throughout the year, with the number of deaths higher in the winter and lower in the summer. The eFigure in the Supplement shows that death counts by week from 2015 to 2019 followed a normal seasonal pattern, with higher average death counts in weeks 1 through 10 (n = 58 366) and weeks 35 through 52 (n = 52 892) than in weeks 25 through 34 (n = 50 227). In contrast, increased deaths in 2020 occurred in 3 distinct waves that peaked during weeks 15 (n = 78 917), 30 (n = 64 057), and 52 (n = 80 656), with only the latter wave aligning with historic seasonal patterns.
Author(s): Farida B. Ahmad, Robert N. Anderson
Publication Date: 31 March 2021
Publication Site: JAMA
Opioid deaths in America reached new highs in the pandemic
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LAST YEAR was a woeful time for people suffering from a drug addiction. Government shutdowns brought job losses and social isolation—conditions that make a transportive high all the more enticing. Those who had previously used drugs with others did so alone; if they overdosed, no one was around to call for help or administer naloxone, a medication that reverses opioid overdoses.Fatal overdoses were marching upwards before the pandemic. But they leapt in the first part of last year as states locked down, according to provisional data from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. Deaths from synthetic opioids—the biggest killer—were up by 52% year-on-year in the 12 months to August, the last month for which data are available. Those drugs killed nearly 52,000 Americans during the period; cocaine and heroin killed about 16,000 and 14,000, respectively (see chart). Once fatalities are fully tallied for 2020, in a few months’ time, it is likely to be the deadliest year yet in America’s opioid epidemic.
Publication Date: 30 March 2021
Publication Site: The Economist
The Spike in Drug Overdose Deaths During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Policy Options to Move Forward
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The CDC’s National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) provides monthly provisional data on predicted total drug overdose deaths during the preceding 12 months. The most recent data reflect September 2019 through August 2020. During that period, there were 88,295 predicted deaths, a record high that is almost 19,000 more deaths (27%) than the prior 12-month period.
Using these predicted data in combination with final data from 2019, we estimated monthly overdose deaths from January to August 2020. Our estimates show that total overdose deaths spiked to record levels in March 2020 after the pandemic hit. Monthly deaths grew by about 50 percent between February and May to more than 9,000; they were likely still around 8,000 in August. Prior to 2020, U.S. monthly overdose deaths had never risen above 6,300.
Author(s): Jesse C. Baumgartner, David C. Radley
Publication Date: 25 March 2021
Publication Site: The Commonwealth Fund
Firearm Mortality Rate, Deaths by State: Map
Link: https://www.governing.com/now/Firearm-Mortality-Rate-Deaths-by-State-Map.html
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But when firearm mortality is viewed state by state, a strong variation emerges. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Massachusetts had the lowest death rate of just 3.4 per 100,000 in 2019, the latest year data is available. Alaska and Mississippi are tied for the highest: 24 deaths per 100,000. The following map and table provide specific numbers for each state.
Publication Date: 24 March 2021
Publication Site: Governing
Moderna Is Testing Its Covid-19 Vaccine on Young Children
Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/moderna-is-testing-its-covid-19-vaccine-on-young-children-11615892416
Excerpt:
Moderna Inc. has begun studying its Covid-19 vaccine in children aged 6 months to 11 years in the U.S. and Canada, the latest effort to widen the mass-vaccination campaign beyond adults.
The Cambridge, Mass., company said Tuesday that the first children have received doses in the study, which Moderna is conducting in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.
“This pediatric study will help us assess the potential safety and immunogenicity of our COVID-19 vaccine candidate in this important younger age population,” Moderna Chief Executive Stéphane Bancel said.
Author(s): Peter Loftus
Publication Date: 16 March 2021
Publication Site: Wall Street Journal
America’s Coronavirus Catastrophe Began With Data
Link: https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2021/03/americas-coronavirus-catastrophe-began-data/172686/
Excerpt:
The consequences of this testing shortage, we realized, could be cataclysmic. A few days later, we founded the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic with Erin Kissane, an editor, and Jeff Hammerbacher, a data scientist. Every day last spring, the project’s volunteers collected coronavirus data for every U.S. state and territory. We assumed that the government had these data, and we hoped a small amount of reporting might prod it into publishing them.
Not until early May, when the CDC published its own deeply inadequate data dashboard, did we realize the depth of its ignorance. And when the White House reproduced one of our charts, it confirmed our fears: The government was using our data. For months, the American government had no idea how many people were sick with COVID-19, how many were lying in hospitals, or how many had died. And the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic, started as a temporary volunteer effort, had become a de facto source of pandemic data for the United States.
Author(s): ROBINSON MEYER and ALEXIS C. MADRIGAL, THE ATLANTIC
Publication Date: 15 March 2021
Publication Site: Defense One
CDC death data as of 17 March 2021 U.S. Dashboards
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Description:
I review national-level U.S. mortality data from 2020 into 2021 (last updated 3/17/2021, weekly data through the week ending 3/6/2021), using the CDC’s own dashboards.
Breakdown by total numbers, states, age group, racial/ethnic group, non-COVID major causes.
CDC excess mortality dashboards: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
Author(s): Mary Pat Campbell
Publication Date: 18 March 2021
Publication Site: Meep’s Math Matters at YouTube
Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation
Link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7511835/
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In testimony before US Congress on March 11, 2020, members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee were informed that estimated mortality for the novel coronavirus was 10-times higher than for seasonal influenza. Additional evidence, however, suggests the validity of this estimation could benefit from vetting for biases and miscalculations. The main objective of this article is to critically appraise the coronavirus mortality estimation presented to Congress. Informational texts from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are compared with coronavirus mortality calculations in Congressional testimony. Results of this critical appraisal reveal information bias and selection bias in coronavirus mortality overestimation, most likely caused by misclassifying an influenza infection fatality rate as a case fatality rate. Public health lessons learned for future infectious disease pandemics include: safeguarding against research biases that may underestimate or overestimate an associated risk of disease and mortality; reassessing the ethics of fear-based public health campaigns; and providing full public disclosure of adverse effects from severe mitigation measures to contain viral transmission.
Author(s): Ronald B. Brown
Publication Date: 12 August 2020
Publication Site: Cambridge University Press Public Health Emergency Collection
Nudge Off: The pandemic has exposed the flaws in the belief that people need to be manipulated into making smarter choices.
Link: https://www.city-journal.org/pandemic-has-undermined-our-sense-of-risk
Excerpt:
Perhaps most damaging, however, has been the idea arising in the last few years that people simply can’t be trusted to make sensible risk assessments—that they must be guided or even manipulated into making smarter choices. The idea that we need to be “tricked” into good behavior was pervasive throughout the pandemic. First, we were told masks weren’t effective, in what turned out to be an attempt to protect supplies for health-care workers. Last spring, we were told that coming into contact with others in just about any environment was unsafe, despite data showing the risk of outdoor transmission was very low. Over the holidays, rather than telling people that they should reduce their risks at holiday gatherings by taking steps like getting a test beforehand, public-health officials said that we should all just stay home, because tests can’t guarantee safety. Even today, the FDA refuses to approve cheap, at-home rapid tests without a prescription because the government doesn’t trust individuals to assess risks based on good, albeit imperfect, information.
The worst, most consequential failure in risk communication concerns the current vaccine rollout. The media constantly instruct us that, even weeks after receiving the second shot, it’s still not safe to socialize without masks. President Biden and Anthony Fauci have warned that we may not be able to resume “normal” life for another year. Fauci recently counseled against vaccinated people eating in indoor restaurants or playing mahjong together. Public-health officials today gave the green light for vaccinated people to gather together—but only after weeks of confusing and contradictory guidance.
Author(s): Allison Schrager
Publication Date: 8 March 2021
Publication Site: City Journal
The Lost Year: What the Pandemic Cost Teenagers
Link: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-lost-year-what-the-pandemic-cost-teenagers
Excerpt:
As many of these experts have noted, the cost of restrictions on youth has gone beyond academics. The CDC found that the proportion of visits to the emergency room by adolescents between ages 12 and 17 that were mental-health-related increased 31% during the span of March to October 2020, compared with the same months in 2019.A study in the March 2021 issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, of people aged 11 to 21 visiting emergency rooms found “significantly higher” rates of “suicidal ideation” during the first half of 2020 (compared to 2019), as well as higher rates of suicide attempts, though the actual number of suicides remained flat.
….
Even with fall sports canceled, the Hobbs school district, with almost 10,000 students, was still hoping to open the new school year for as much in-person instruction as possible. More than just scholastic considerations were driving this. In late April, six weeks into the spring’s pandemic lockdowns, the community had been stunned by the suicide of an 11-year-old boy, Landon Fuller, an outgoing kid who loved going to school and had, his mother said, struggled with the initial lockdowns.
New Mexico has consistently had one of the highest youth suicide rates in the country — it’s roughly twice the national average — and preliminary state statistics would later show the 2020 rate as unchanged. Nationwide, deaths by suicide in the 10-to-24 age group increased by half between 2007 and 2018, a trend that has been linked to multiple factors, from the growing availability of guns to the spread of smartphones and social media. In New Mexico, mental health experts say, the factors also include high rates of depression on Native American reservations, and rural isolation in general.
Author(s): Alec MacGillis
Publication Date: 8 March 2021
Publication Site: ProPublica
COVID-19: CDC Unveils Highly-Anticipated Guidelines For Those Who Are Fully Vaccinated
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Those fully vaccinated can:
Visit indoors with unvaccinated people from one other household without masks or physical distancing, if the unvaccinated people are at low risk for severe disease.
Visit others who are vaccinated indoors without masks or physical distancing
Skip testing and quarantine if exposed to someone who has COVID but is asymptomatic, but should monitor for symptoms for 14 days
Author(s): Joe Lombardi
Publication Date: 8 March 2021
Publication Site: Daily Voice