Not to bring anyone down any more than I did with Tuesday's chart but the mortality picture is not improving and could play a role in continued labor supply disruption for years to come, barring a new immigration policy.
In the 25-44 year old cohort, excess deaths are running at about 1,000 people a week above the baseline. The 45-64 year old cohort is faring a bit better with about 300 excess deaths per week. Since Covid began, about 430k people have died from al causes in excess of the 2015-19 baseline in these two cohorts. In a working population of 130M, not catastrophic but certainly, given labor shortages, not welcome at all.
The posture of the CDC, which would normally jump on unusual patterns of premature deaths, has offered up "long-Covid" as a significant health threat. Without explicitly drawing a line from excess mortality to complications in several biological systems they attribute to Covid and its sequelae, the message to the Covid faithful is a clear one; death and disability should be attributed to long-Covid in the event excess mortality comes off the verboten list at Twitter.
We have no doubt there are and will continue to be post-recovery complications that may be a factor in the excess mortality of young people. The central questions, however, are how much of a factor is "long-Covid" and are there any other variables to be considered?
The Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey reports that about 1/3 of all American adults who had Covid report experiencing "long-Covid." I am not sure how useful that data point is since 'long-Covid" right now escapes an agreed upon clinical definition. The survey also asks about significant activity limitations. Only about 2% of adults reported significant activity limitations from long-Covid which suggests it could play some role in mortality but not the starring one.
In addition to the continued labor disruption that is likely to be a macro factor, we can also conclude health systems - the ones not caught between the rock of demand and the hard place of labor shortages - are going to remain busy with very ill people.
Emily Evans
Managing Director – Health Policy
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