[ad_1]
The coronavirus pandemic is expected to make 2020 the deadliest year in U.S. history.
While final data will not be available for months, preliminary figures suggest the United States has recorded more than 3.2 million deaths this year, at least 400,000 more than in 2019 – a figure that could further increase, according to the Associated Press.
That marks a 15% jump, the biggest percentage jump in a single year since 1918, when tens of thousands of American soldiers died in World War I and hundreds of thousands died from the Spanish flu.
As of Wednesday morning, COVID-19 killed 322,849 in the United States, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, with the country still recording record highs.
He’s been the number one killer at times ahead of heart disease and cancer – and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) thinks he could be responsible for far more than those identified so far.
An explosion of pneumonia cases earlier this year could have been the death of COVID-19 that simply went unrecognized at the start of the epidemic, according to Robert Anderson, the CDC official who oversaw sea mortality statistics.
An unexpected number of deaths from certain types of heart and circulatory diseases, diabetes and dementia may also be linked to the pandemic, attributed to patients already debilitated by these conditions and a decrease in the care they received in reason for lockouts.
Suicide deaths fell in 2019 compared to 2018, but Anderson said the encouraging trend did not appear to have continued this year, a rise due to loneliness in lockdowns and the exacerbation of existing mental health issues. .
Drug overdose deaths, meanwhile, also appear to have increased – the 81,000 deaths recorded in the 12 months ending in May, the highest number on record in a one-year period.
Experts blame the pandemic’s disruption in in-person treatment and recovery services, as well as people who abuse drugs while at home alone, with no one to call for help.
But perhaps the most important factor is that COVID-19 has caused supply problems for dealers, forcing them to increasingly mix cheap and deadly fentanyl into heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, experts said.
“I don’t think there are a bunch of new people who have suddenly started using drugs because of COVID. On the contrary, I think the supply of people who already use drugs is more contaminated, ”said Shannon Monnat, a researcher at Syracuse University who studies overdose trends.
With pole wires
[ad_2]
Source link