You know, what really upsets me

[conuly]

is that I'm pretty sure that without the pandemic, Mommy would've gotten a bipap and a pacemaker at least six months earlier, perhaps as much as a year earlier.

That might not have extended her lifespan, although I think it would have at least a little, but it would certainly have improved her quality of life. Heck, getting out and about, moving and seeing people, would've possibly done both those things... though then again, she still would have been buying cigarettes without lockdown, so maybe that particular factor, not so much.

I tried googling about secondary deaths due to the pandemic, but other than one 2020 paper suggesting the terminology "tertiary deaths" for those like my mother's, where the condition was going to kill them sooner or later, but the pandemic probably made it sooner, I couldn't see if anybody is even still attempting to estimate those. Maybe they all coalesced around some different vocabulary for this sort of thing, and my search terms are wrong.

***********************************

Sniffing Out the Science of Smelling

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Fire ant rafts form because of the Cheerios effect, study concludes

Scientists have estimated how many ants there are on Earth. Clue: It’s a lot

Four Female Fennec Fox Kits Emerge From The Den

The Fatal Error of an Ancient, HIV-Like Virus

The teeth makers of Kandahar

The Problem With Outsourcing Your Crimes

Separating Sports by Sex Doesn’t Make Sense

Iranian women burn their hijabs as hundreds protest death of Mahsa Amini

Texas sheriff opens criminal investigation into Martha's Vineyard migrant trips

A Rural Doctor Gave Her All. Then Her Heart Broke.

Satellite images show unprecedented floods have left parts of Pakistan underwater.

Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border clashes claim nearly 100 lives

Comments

[lilysea]

The term "excess deaths" includes both people who died from COVID, and people who died because their treatable cancer was diagnosed later than it would have been in a COVID-free world.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, I think that's the only way to tell. How many people die normally, how many people died in the last two years.

Though, that doesn't take into account disability.

[dewline]

No, it doesn't. I worry about that being pointedly ignored in the months and years to come.

[larryhammer]

I have seen estimates of between 3 and 4 million extra deaths (above and beyond the 1 million from admitted to be from Covid) based on expected death rates from just before the pandemic. Separating out which were unadmitted Covid and from delayed health care has proved just as challenging as you might expect, given how bad public health research and statistics are treated in this county.

[thewayne]

There's no doubt Covid caused a lot of deaths and suffering due to hospitals being filled up. Had the government done a better job of trying to protect people, it's possible there wouldn't've been nearly as much a problem. But what happened, happened.

[pauamma]

If having an estimate count would help you process (and you haven't considered doing that or thought of it already), ask a librarian for help?

[mindstalk]

There are various estimates of excess deaths, by The Economists or at Our World In Data. My friend's https://plague.wtf/ draws from one or more of them.