How many "life years" have we lost to Covid?

[hst43102]

Hi everyone, I had an idea this week, which I thought I would open up to everyone on here.

Basically, how many years of life have we lost due to Covid?

1) Of the people who died, how long was each of them predicted to live for?
2) How many years of productivity/mental health have been lost amongst those who have been locked down for 1.5 years?

Personally, I know a handful of people who died following contraction of Covid - including some of my close family. However, all the people I know were over 75 and most had been in poor/ill health for a number of years - so probably didn't have too long to live anyway.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[ExRes]

I'd personally go for another couple of options

3) How many years of productivity have been lost writing about Covid and how many mental health problems have been caused by the multitude of scaremongers who have loved every moment of it

4) How many death certificates have been signed off as caused by Covid simply for convenience

 

[NorthOxonian]

Both are very important questions, but are also difficult.

It's probably fairly easy to get a rough estimate for 1. Life tables are regularly published by the government which state how many more years people of different ages are likely to live. The average person who died from the virus was just over 80, and at that age you would be expected to live around 8 more years. Since there have been around 125,000 deaths, that suggests around 1 million years of life have been lost to the disease.

This doesn't take into account two factors - the first being that some people who died were much younger, and the second being that generally those who died were generally in poor health and so wouldn't be expected to live as long as the average person of their age. Therefore, my figure may be slightly off, but because these factors effectively cancel each other out, I can't see the true figure being less than 500,000 years or more than 2 million.

Answering 2 is far more difficult because it's more subjective, and also is likely to rise much more in the future - mental health issues being created now are still going to be causing problems 30, 40, or 50 years down the line. We do know that the proportion of people suffering mental ill health has increased substantially though - for example 1 in 5 people now have symptoms of depression, compared with 1 in 10 beforehand, which in terms of numbers of people is around 7 million. But to convert this to a number of years of life lost, you'd need to consider difficult moral and philosophical questions. For example, what is the relative value of a year spent struggling with poor mental health versus a year spent in a better mental state? I don't really think that's possible to quantify and it will vary between individuals - and therefore it's probably not possible to get a definitive answer for part 2.

 

[JB_B]

Hi everyone, I had an idea this week, which I thought I would open up to everyone on here.

Basically, how many years of life have we lost due to Covid?

1) Of the people who died, how long was each of them predicted to live for?
2) How many years of productivity/mental health have been lost amongst those who have been locked down for 1.5 years?

Personally, I know a handful of people who died following contraction of Covid - including some of my close family. However, all the people I know were over 75 and most had been in poor/ill health for a number of years - so probably didn't have too long to live anyway.

Any thoughts on this?

Are you expecting to compare (1) [life years lost = more time spent dead] and (2) [time spent under varying degrees of social contact restrictions] ? If so, then I don't think you're comparing like with like.

If you want to come up with any meaningful comparison then you'll need some actuarial input ( to get expected life times assuming no-Covid) and you should also have a think about how quality adjusted life years work - it would be interesting to know what assumptions you come up with for your calculations. You'll need to think about that for both sides of the comparison.

In particular, under heading (1) , as well as deaths, you'll need to account for the life years diminished in quality for those with long Covid and also the huge toll of other Covid-induced long term disease - e.g. the brain-damaged, blinded, deafened, those who've lost arms, legs, digits and other organ damage. If you think that the downsides under heading (2) could have been lower by not applying social distancing rules then you'll also need to come up with an assumption about what effect taking no action social distancing measures would have realistically had on the downsides under (1) - perhaps you'd multiply all those tolls 3 or 4-fold if no measures were taken at all?

The costs of limiting the spread of Covid in the UK have been enormous (including, importantly, the impact on mental health for many people.) Those costs have not been bourne equally - the old have been hit hardest by the disease itself but it's the young and the poor who've been hit hardest by the effects of the social distancing countermeasures. The current government has abjectly failed to provide effective mitigation for those worst affected.

 

[bramling]

Hi everyone, I had an idea this week, which I thought I would open up to everyone on here.

Basically, how many years of life have we lost due to Covid?

1) Of the people who died, how long was each of them predicted to live for?
2) How many years of productivity/mental health have been lost amongst those who have been locked down for 1.5 years?

Personally, I know a handful of people who died following contraction of Covid - including some of my close family. However, all the people I know were over 75 and most had been in poor/ill health for a number of years - so probably didn't have too long to live anyway.

Any thoughts on this?

I can only speak for two Covid deaths in my immediate circles:

1) 94 and a list of underlying conditions as long as the arm
2) 62 and underlying cancer

I suspect both would have lived longer, but probably not massively so, perhaps a year or two at the most.

I know of two younger losses in my work circles (50s I think), not sure what the situation was with underlying conditions there so can't comment further.