From June 27, 2021, to March 26, 2022, the US would have averted 122 304 deaths if COVID-19 mortality matched that of the 10 most-vaccinated states and 266 700 deaths if US excess all-cause mortality rate matched that of the 10 most-vaccinated states. If the US matched the rates of other peer countries, averted deaths would have been substantially higher in most cases (range, 154 622-357 899 for COVID-19 mortality; 209 924-465 747 for all-cause mortality).
An article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated the number of people who died of COVID, unnecessarily.
The JAMA article was summarized by Faye Flam in Bloomberg News, as “The Tragedy of Avoidable COVID Deaths.”
She writes:
As early as the fall of 2020, statisticians were looking at all-cause mortality to try to figure out whether official Covid-19 deaths were overcounted or undercounted. But today, the death data are more complete, and cover enough time to make revealing comparisons between different periods and regions. While researchers are still figuring out which factors swayed these death statistics, a few conclusions are becoming clear: First, that Covid has been a global tragedy, causing millions of deaths. Second, that vaccines have saved countless lives. And third, that during the omicron and delta waves, the value of any non-pharmaceutical mitigation measures — masking, distancing, closing businesses and schools — was probably not nothing, but vaccination rates mattered far, far more.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I hope we are gearing up for the new waves coming out of China now that they have opened up. Right now, Covid seems to be headed toward flu, with increasing techniques for spreading and less dramatic symptoms. Who knows in the future?
D, for your review. It’s written by “The 74” but saw it on the Yahoo! News feed. Be well….
https://news.yahoo.com/earthquake-judge-rules-pa-school-201647279.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
The value of closures were a hell of a lot more than nothing. When Covid first struck in places like NYC with high population and and household density those closures saved thousands in a population with absolutely no previous exposure to the virus. Effective masks were not available . . 20 % in NYC had Covid antibodies by July 2020 . Those would be the people in Social and Work Situations most likely to be infected. And in multi generational households most likely to spread it . Those shut downs saved thousands of lives. By the time the next round of Covid struck not only was there partial immunity in those communities that were hit the hardest, by late December the most vulnerable populations were being vaccinated .
All one has to do to know how effective lock downs were is look at how effectively they stopped the spread in China. Or in South Korea combined with testing and masks and Social distancing. The fact that it is an unsustainable policy in the long run is a different story . It was a package and the entire package was rejected by right wing morons in part and at first because they saw it as an inner city problem..
If I encouraged people at the end of their lives to take their own life ,I could be prosecuted in most states and imprisoned for several years. How should we hold those responsible for the mass suicide of hundreds of thousands of Americans .
Careful reading would show that the value of actions like masks, distancing, and closures was not nearly as important as vaccination during the omicron and delta waves. You are referencing a time when there was no vaccine before either the delta or omicron waves.
How many lives need to be saved/protected to overcome the “was not nearly as important as” standard and how should they be documented? Does the fact that vaccines are better–anyone out there disagree with this? anyone?–than masks and social distancing create a different value determining who was protected by what? Where does dying before a vaccine were developed compare to dying from either the delta or omicron variants?
Teachingeconomist
Masks, does not mean wearing Grandpa’s old underwear it means a well fitting N95 or legitimate KN95 mask and training on how to wear them. It means having enough of a quantity that used ones can be disposed of after a few rotations of use (preferably one ). The problem with masks even when worn properly is hands .Testing prior to the Pandemic found them ineffective in un-trained persons because they all too often touched surfaces, shook hands and then scratched their face under the mask .
Of course the vaccines were superior especially under real life circumstances. Even more effective than vaccines was Vaccines and Masks and avoiding high risk situations. Like large indoor venues in periods of high infection. All of which were rejected by too many. I don’t think we have a clue as to the long term implications of a virus that attacked multiple systems. Hopefully we don’t have to find out.
Joel and gregB,
I suggest that you read the paper.The link is above. Personally I tend to believe scientists even when their findings contradict my prior beliefs. I know that is not true for everyone.
Wasted breath.
Teachingeconomist
I agree wholeheartedly
Follow the the scientists not the scientist .
This recommendation is not 2020 not 2021 but Sept 2022
https://pix11.com/news/local-news/cdc-recommends-masks-in-10-counties-in-ny-amid-tripledemic/
Teachingeconomist
Does this alter your preconceived notions
Correction Dec 16 2022
https://pix11.com/news/coronavirus/cdc-recommends-indoor-masks-in-4-nyc-boroughs-long-island-amid-covid-spike/
Teachingeconomist tends to believe scientists like Emily Oster*
*Renowned crapidemiologist
SomeDAM Farleft Poet
Now I only tend to follow economists who were able to see a housing bubble as big as the Chinese Balloon and the resulting financial collapse. Most tended to be on the Left . Although no one ever accused Stephen Roach of being a lefty . My favorite Lefty economist likes to say: “in no other profession can ‘experts’ be wrong so often and still keep their jobs”
Like Peter Navarro, Oster is an economist not a Physician an epidemiologist or a Public Health Scientist of any kind. She is also Chicago School hack with an agenda, no matter where she is currently planted.
https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2022/03/08/how-dark-money-shaped-the-school-safety-debate/
Teachingeconomist should try some hydroxychloroquine to clear the brain fog. What could go wrong .
In no profession other than economics can one be wrong 11 times out of 10 and still have the audacity to claim one is right.
Since the dead don’t suffer, only us living people suffer from the family and friends we’ve lost, how about the tragedy of Long COVID?
Studies and data repeatedly reveal that about 40% of people exposed to the virus, that even do not show symptoms, although the virus is in their system, are running around infecting others, and may also end up with long COVID.
Neurological symptoms
Difficulty thinking or concentrating (sometimes referred to as “brain fog”)
Headache.
Sleep problems.
Dizziness when you stand up (lightheadedness)
Pins-and-needles feelings.
Change in smell or taste.
Depression or anxiety
There’s more than that short list:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html
Once dead, the dead also do not need health care anymore.
“Even with the nebulous definitions, the significant economic impact of long COVID is clear. In July 2022 update of earlier figures, David Cutler of Harvard University estimates that the total economic cost of long COVID is $3.7 trillion. That’s $11,000 per capita or 17% of the 2019 gross domestic product (GDP).”
https://jheor.org/post/1746-economic-effects-of-long-covid-even-larger-than-we-thought
Yet as many as 45% of the American people experienced the same, exact things we did and claim it was either a totalitarian nightmare or a false memory because freedom.
I’m free . . . freefalling
–The Freedumb Brigade
It is very revealing when the data show that the Covid death rate is way out of sync with the rest of the industrialized world. Death by stubborn, anti-science politics; shame on us!
I agree. It’s shameful. That’s the word.
Of course, the wide swathes of the country that allow their public schools to be underfunded or just plain dismantled often for profit is another tragedy.
The attacks on schools and public health are part of the same unraveling, tattered fabric of our civilization.
Lots and lots of blood on Donnie Death’s creepy little hands.
I live in Flor-uh-duh where the nonsense about Covid was so thick that one had to wade through it, thanks to Trump and our governor. I have actually had people tell me that they weren’t going to let the “govermint” inject them with microchips.
Don’t look up.
Sadly there is little evolutionary value. Not PC !
That’s what happens when people drink Floridated water.
Part of the DeSantis conspiracy to sap and adulterate all their precious bodily fluids
Haaaaaaa!
The Repugnican Party has long been devoted to screwing the poor and middle class in order to further engorge the rich, who write the biggest donor checks. But in one significant way, it has changed. It used to wear the livery and fly the banner of the Free Market, a magical entity that operated, they would assure you, to produce the best of all possible worlds. Ofc, this philosophy was a smear of pretend respectability over an actual belief system that melded together racism, classism, and eugenics.
Now, however, it has dropped all pretense of noble motivations (of the kind peddled by liars like Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley). Now it has just become the part of crazy. It looks at a line around the block to get the autograph of Marjorie Taylor Greene and says, hey, this works. So, it’s now all crazy all the time. See Trump and DeSantis’s responses to Covid.
Don’t look up.
cx: the party of crazy
cx: It used to wear the livery and fly the banner of the Free Market, a fictitious, magical entity that operated, or so Repugnican apologists and even the Party’s leaders would assure you, to produce the best of all possible worlds.
Permit me to revise that:
The Repugnican Party has long been devoted to screwing the poor and middle class in order to further engorge the rich, who write the biggest donor checks. But in one significant way, it has changed. It used to wear the livery and fly the banner of the Free Market, a fictitious, magical entity that operated, or so Repugnican apologists and even Party leaders would assure you, to produce the best of all possible worlds. Ofc, this “philosophy” was the barest smear of pretend respectability over an actual belief system that melded together racism, classism, and eugenics. Free Market fairy dust was the powder over the pox.
Now, however, the Repugnican Party has dropped all pretense of noble motivations of the kind that used to be peddled by liars/flim-flam artists/court singers for the oligarchy like Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley. Now it has become just, simply, the party of crazy. It looks at a line around the block to get the autograph of Marjorie Taylor Greene and says, hey, this works. So, it’s now all crazy all the time. See Trump and DeSantis’s utterly unscientific and deadly denialism about to Covid. Lots of blood on those tiny hands.
Don’t look up.
Bingo
We have people willfully rejecting scientific recommendations not just regarding Covid, but including a range of dangerous diseases. It amounts to a death wish. Following the Darwin model, one could conclude that its OK for the idiots to kill themselves off. However, we also consider suicide to be an illegal act. Some much for logic.
We don’t have the political will to make people protect themselves. Instead, we have one political party that condones this nonsense and encourages people to doubt science. That fits with the long tradition of anti-intellectual “Know Nothing”-ism in US history.
In this context the idea that the extra deaths were avoidable is nonsense. We’d have to live in a different country with a more educated population and better leadership for that to be true.
Unfortunately, the science-deniers pass their germs on to others.
Absolutely true. Fortunately, then tend to be obnoxiously vocal, so you know who they are and are alerted to the need for self care.
Diane Ravitch, I am pro-vaccine and completely agree with you. Having said that, it is unreasonable to blame people who isolated themselves at the start of this so-called pandemic who have not been vaccinated for its persistence. Someone who stays at home minding his or her own business and not interacting with people unless by absolute necessity is less of a threat than people who got these jabs and can still risk transmitting this so-called virus to other people.