COVID-19 slashed life expectancy in U.S. far more than peer nations

A new study finds the pandemic reduced average U.S. life expectancy by 2.26 years between 2019 and 2021 – a dramatically greater impact than COVID-19 had on the lifespans of 19 peer nations.

The impact of COVID-19 has been widely reported in popular media and scientific journals, but the latest analysis is interesting for two reasons: 1) It compares mortality data from the United States and 19 other high-income nations and 2) It is the first study to report 2021 statistics.

The news is disappointing. Researchers found the average life expectancy decline in those 19 other nations was 0.29 years -- less than four months. Several nations actually experienced a lengthening of the average lifespan.  

The pandemic’s impact on the U.S. population was nearly seven times larger.

The recent study mirrors other recent research. For example, last month the CDC found that, after analyzing mortality data, COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer – for the second consecutive year. A March analysis found that COVID-19 briefly became the number one cause of death for people ages 45 to 84 in January 2022, a distinction it previously held a year earlier.

Depending on your preferred source, the total number of Americans who died from COVID-19 is now over 1 million. 

As an organization focused on lengthening the human lifespan, these reports are distressing. Reaching our goal of making 90 the new 50 by 2030 will only be possible if we have a solid, static baseline to work from. That baseline depends on people taking advantage of the medicines and medical procedures available to protect health and extend life. 

Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, professor at the VCU School of Medicine and one of the study’s authors, told VCU News suggests that may be the problem. He said the COVID-19 variants, delta and omicron, that were so virulent here swept through other countries, including some where life expectancy actually increased. 

“Deaths from these variants occurred almost entirely among unvaccinated people,” Woolf said. “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.”

There are plenty of explanations for why so many people are reluctant to get vaccinated, including political pressure and concerns about the vaccines. However, we fear that concerns about mRNA used to produce the vaccines will impede efforts to lengthen human life. Why? Because similar mRNA technology is being used in the development of anti-aging therapies.

Making 90 the new 50 will require us to embrace the promise of groundbreaking innovation. Skeptics may say that will require too great a leap of faith.  We believe it just means trust the rigor and discipline of science and acknowledging the facts it reveals to us.