Scientists have calculated the consequences of the pandemic: the level of human health has decreased

Humanity will have to reap the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic for a very long time, but today the world has changed significantly. Recent estimates have shown that the pandemic has begun to claim an additional 2.5 million lives annually, and countless people who have been ill with COVID-19 become, if not disabled, then significantly less healthy than before the disease.

Nobody knows what to do yet, but today there are more and more reports about the sad and far from final consequences of the viral invasion on Earth.

Taking lives

Many countries today publish statistical reports that speak eloquently of a significant increase in mortality in connection with the pandemic. Thus, according to the EUROMOMO website, which presents data from 38 EU countries, the total number of excess deaths for 2022 today already exceeds the figures for 2020 and 2021 for the same period.

It is especially unpleasant that today more and more deaths are recorded not only after a severe course of covid, but even after a disease of moderate severity. The National Center for Global Health and Medicine of Japan shared alarming findings: with each wave of COVID-19 among the deceased patients, the proportion with severe manifestations of the disease decreases, and the proportion of those with moderate symptoms increases. During the seventh wave of the pandemic, which was recorded in the summer of 2022 and which was caused by a kind of “mild” strain of Omicron, only 5% of the dead had serious symptoms of COVID-19. Fewer people die from pneumonitis, respiratory failure and cytokine storm today, according to Japanese scientists. They emphasize that infection with Omicron leads to death, adversely affecting the body with existing problems before infection, in other words, it destabilizes chronic conditions. Therefore, infection with coronavirus becomes an aggravating factor, which becomes an impetus for an earlier death for chronic patients.

Another consequence of the pandemic: life expectancy (LE) is rapidly falling. In Russia, it fell sharply already in the first year of the pandemic: according to independent demographer Alexei Raksha, in 2020 it fell by 1.8 years at once: in 2019, our life expectancy was 73.34 years, and in 2020 it reached 71.54 years . And this trend continues. At the same time, the gap between the life expectancy of men and women has not changed – in our country it is still about 10 years. In other countries, life expectancy for men has decreased, as a rule, more strongly, and the gap with women has grown, but in Russia it has not, but it is still one of the largest in the world due to male supermortality.

The United States, meanwhile, released data for 2021: amid the pandemic, life expectancy fell even more than in 2020. And yet Americans are terribly far from us: in 2021, the average US citizen could expect to live to be 76 years old, compared to 77 years in 2020 and 79 years in 2019. This is the lowest since 1996 and the biggest two-year decline since 1923.

Another extremely alarming indicator: in 2022, the world is registering an increase in hospitalizations of children with COVID-19 and an increase in infant mortality. The excess mortality rate among children 0-14 years old for 35 weeks in 2022 is 10 times higher than the same period in 2021. And excess mortality in the age group of 15-44 years in the coming year is 30% higher compared to 2021. ❗️ And here are the British data: in less than 8 months of 2022, as many children died from COVID-19 in England as the total number of deaths in 8 months of 2020 and 2021.

Life after COVID-19

New modeling by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has shown that in the first two years of the pandemic, at least 17 million people in the 53 Member States of the WHO European Region continued to have health problems after experiencing COVID-19.

Almost 145 million people (that is, the actual population of Russia) in the first two years of the pandemic suffered from any of the three sets of symptoms of long-covid: chronic fatigue syndrome, cognitive impairment and shortness of breath. Long-COVID was twice as common in women as in men.

A study by the Swiss insurance company CSS found that the health of the Swiss has deteriorated significantly during the pandemic. So, in March 2020, 22% of Swiss residents did not consider themselves healthy, and in June 2022, already 35% of Swiss believe that they have health problems. A more pronounced deterioration in health has occurred over the last year from June 2020 to June 2021: the proportion of healthy people has decreased in all age groups. But most of all, the state of health has changed in the age group from 36 to 65 years. Before the pandemic, Swiss residents were ill on average 3.3 days a year, and last year 4.3 days. Significantly increased the proportion of people sick for more than 10 days over the past 12 months.

By the way, according to a recent American report on a new wave of COVID-19 caused by a sub-variant of Omicron BA.5, in 21.5% of those infected, the symptoms of the disease lasted 4 weeks or more. As a doctor of the Samara Regional Clinical Cardiology Dispensary told at a medical conference, in the structure of calls to cardiologists (survey of 24 cardiologists), 32% of patients suffer from health problems after suffering COVID-19. The top five complaints are fatigue, blood pressure instability, shortness of breath, heart rate disturbances, and tachycardia. 80% of the cardiologists surveyed had experienced COVID-19, and 83% of doctors report symptoms of long-term covid lasting 15 months.

… Experts have no doubt that countries with a massive spread of the virus and a large number of re-infections will face a post-COVID “epidemic” of cardiovascular, neurological and mental diseases. Changes in health status are indicative of a rapidly declining quality of life for many people. According to the forecasts of Alexander Solovyov, the leading expert of the MedLabExpret Association, the deterioration in the health of the population caused by the pandemic, directly or indirectly, will increase the burden on the healthcare system. In addition, the global economy will suffer, as efficiency and productivity will decrease, and the number of working people will decrease. The costs of maintaining health and treatment, on the contrary, will grow. The outlook is, to put it mildly, bleak.

Health problems after covid, alas, do not bypass even children. New case study data highlights that children also suffer from prolonged covid after an initial mild or asymptomatic illness. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that 120,000 children in the UK are suffering from the effects of long-term covid, with 26,000 of them having symptoms for more than 1 year. A quarter of children experienced persistent symptoms months after being hospitalized with acute COVID-19 infection, with nearly one in ten children being diagnosed with multisystem disease. In total, more than 200 different post-COVID symptoms in children have been reported, affecting every organ system.

Alexander Solovyov says on his social network that children will continue to be repeatedly infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus if schools do not have a normal ventilation and air purification system. Two additional prerequisites: use of FFP2/FFP3 respirators during times of high levels of community transmission, and vaccination of children.

“A large number of publications on the post-Covid problem are increasingly convincing that the world has not become healthier after COVID-19. However, behavioral choices in dealing with “life or wallet?” and “Death or Mask?” unfortunately leans towards the wallet (short-term economic benefits) with disregard for the risk of death,” says Alexander Solovyov.