Perspectives on the impact of COVID-19
The past week has seen the number of COVID-19 deaths cross the 100,000 mark. Many news outlets have used this number to compare the COVID-19 pandemic to various wars. I would like to dig into these numbers deeper to give a broader perspective on how the trauma of this pandemic compares to past wars and pandemics.
One set of facts looked at three different ways.
My analysis focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and World War II, considering deaths and duration for each. The statistics are for the United States alone. All of these events greatly effected other parts of the globe, but, for the moment, I’m telling this story from the United States’ perspective. The following table lists the basic facts. I plan on adding some more details of my analysis in an appendix to this post, but let us use these numbers as a starting point.
| Event | Deaths | Duration (months) | Average Age at Death |
|---|---|---|---|
| World War II | 407,316 | 44 | 26 |
| Korean War | 36,574 | 37 | 23 |
| Vietnam War | 58,318 | 122 | 22 |
| AIDS/HIV Pandemic | 529,113 | 288 | 40 |
| COVID-19 | 88,243 | 4 | 75 |
Many of the stories I saw compared the number of COVID-19 deaths to various wars but did not include the AIDS/HIV pandemic. It seems obvious that if I make comparisons, I should include the other major pandemic that has happened in our lifetime. I did not include either of the Iraq Wars because there were so few US casualties in these wars, 4,000 and 5,000 respectively, that they won’t show on the scale of these charts.
The numbers I used for the charts are close but not perfect. That being said, these numbers are close enough that the imperfections won’t change the shape of the charts and the big picture observations below. The COVID numbers were taken from the CDC website through the end of May at which point there were officially 88,243 COVID-19 casualties. The true total is well beyond that. If you find solid data sources, please point me to them.
First: Lives lost
The recent newspaper stories measure the impact of COVID-19 by stating the number of deaths due to COVID-19 and then comparing these number to the number of war casualties. The one twist in my presentation is to plot the numbers so that you can see how close or far apart the scale of loss is.
In this chart, you see that the AIDS/HIV pandemic and World War II far out pace the other major events that have caused a loss of life. Also, when these events are put on this scale, you see that the COVID-19 pandemic, the Vietnam War, and the Korean War death statistics are roughly the same.
Second: Years of life lost
I wanted to look at the tragedy of COVID-19 through a different lens. Many naysayers of this pandemic have focused on how old the victims of COVID-19 have been. They have said that old lives do not matter. There have even been some people who have said that it is better to take these lives in order to keep the economy open. One must acknowledge the kernel of truth in that perspective. A soldier’s death at 20 with 50 plus years ahead of him is different than my great aunt’s death at 91.
For this chart, I added up all of the cumulative years of life that were lost in all these events. Every WW II soldier who died was expected to live another 47 years. I multiplied every WW II death by 47 years to get the years of life lost in WW II. I did the same for the other event. My analysis was slightly more sophisticated for the pandemics. This slight difference is explained in the appendix..
First off, notice that the scale of this graph is in millions of years. That we lost and are losing millions of years of human potential is a huge tragedy. Note that on this scale the COVID-19 pandemic is at the bottom of the chart. However, note that it is at the same scale as the Korean and Vietnam wars. Despite COVID-19 victims being mostly elderly, we are still losing massive numbers of years of human potential.
Also, remember that the COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing. It is still climbing this leader board and could easily overtake the Korean War in this particular view.
Third: Rate of years of life lost
One of the biggest differences between the COVID-19 pandemic and all the rest of these events (besides the fact that it not yet over) is that the loss of life in this pandemic has happened in months not years. The loss of life in all of the other events happened over years or decades.
To capture this difference between these events, we will divide the years of life lost by the length of the event. A long event will spread out the amount of loss which results in a smaller rate. When the event happens over a short period of time, the rate of loss becomes larger. For example, I take the years of life lost in WW II and divide by 44 months to get the average number of years of life lost every month of WW II.
In this metric, the COVID-19 pandemic is becoming close to the scale of World War II as an event. When viewed through this perspective, the COVID-19 pandemic is a different sort of crisis than the AIDS/HIV pandemic, the Korean War, or the Vietnam War. The events that dragged out over decades, namely the Vietnam War and the AIDS Pandemic, don’t have the same impact.
One failing of this analysis is that the chart only shows the average rate of years lost. The AIDS/HIV pandemic would look different if I only looked at the peak loss of life in 1995. Similarly, the Vietnam War might look different if I measured the rate only when the war was at its hottest.
There is a reductionism inherent in measuring human loss using numbers. It is simplistic to compare pandemics with wars or even to compare one pandemic to another pandemic. However, as long as one is mindful that loss is not only a set of numbers, then these charts can help us think about our current pandemic.
No matter how you slice it, COVID-19 is one of the most significant periods of loss in the United States. Apart from COVID-19, I have only previous been cognizant of the AIDS/HIV pandemic. Prior to analyzing the numbers above, I was not as tuned into that pandemic as I should have been. The scale of loss during the peak of the AIDS crisis was staggering. It was not only a lot of lives, but these were young lives. From that perspective, AIDS was more like a war than COVID-19 is. However, COVID-19 has been more traumatic because it is taking more people away from us faster than any event since WW II.
And do not forget COVID-19 is ongoing. Unless states make major missteps (which some might), COVID-19 will probably not surpass WW II in the speed with which it takes lives. However, this crisis will definitely go on for many more months, probably for a year or more, and could conceivably go on for decades. The absolute scale of COVID-19 loss will keep climbing in those first two charts. Work to stop it.