During 2021, the U.S. saw the “highest mortality rate” in the nation’s history, Dr. Clay Marsh, West Virginia’s COVID-19 Czar, said Wednesday.
Marsh said during Gov. Jim Justice’s pandemic briefing that about 3.5 million people died in 2021, surpassing the previous record of 3.3 million in 2020.
More than 500,000 people died from COVID in 2021, he said, as well as 100,000 from drug overdoses, both statistics upping the record number of deaths.
Since the pandemic began, almost 1 million deaths in the U.S. have been COVID-related. As of Wednesday, West Virginia has recorded 6,777 COVID deaths.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, deaths in the United States increased by 19 percent between 2019 and 2020 following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 — the largest spike in mortality in 100 years.
Deaths remained elevated in 2021 as the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic continued, the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2021, population estimated.
Not only that, Marsh said life expectancy for Americans has dropped, losing 2.5 years since 2019.
A study by the University of Colorado Boulder, the Urban Institute and VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) was the first to reveal the drop in U.S. life expectancy between 2019 and 2021.
In 2019, life expectancy in this country was 78.79 years, a number that dropped to 77 in 2020 and to 76.60 in 2021.
The study also examined 19 “peer countries,” and found they “experienced a smaller decline in life expectancy between 2019 and 2021 (an average of 0.57 years) and an average 0.28-year increase between 2020 and 2021 — widening the gap in life expectancy between the United States and peer countries to more than five years.”
The enormous loss of life documented by the study was caused in part by COVID-19 variants, delta and omicron,
“Deaths from these variants occurred almost entirely among unvaccinated people,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Population Health at the VCU School of Medicine. “What happened in the U.S. is less about the variants than the levels of resistance to vaccination and the public’s rejection of practices, such as masking and mandates, to reduce viral transmission.”
Marsh said countries not as well prepared as others with vaccinations suffered more consequences from COVID-19.
That is one of the reason he is still urging residents to get vaccinated.
“It’s really important to get vaccinated,” he said, as the Omicron BA.2 variant continues to spread.
Although COVID-related hospitalizations in the state remain low (100 on Wednesday), he said about 20 percent of positive cases are now the BA.2 variant and “we know that will grow.”
Vaccinations and boosters can prevent those hospitalizations, as well as deaths, he said.
Justice echoed Marsh’s words.
“These variants will keep coming,” Justice said. “You are being very foolish if you don’t take advantage and get that booster shot … You don’t need to be another one of these people who we lose. Get yourself vaccinated. It’s so safe.”
— Contact Charles Boothe at cboothe@bdtonline.com
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