After a Society-Changing Loss of People

In a Zoom gathering on New Year’s Day, mention came up of the recently announced fact that the USA had more than one death per thousand of population. A surgeon in the group said, “That’s a society-changing number of deaths.”

Her remark gnawed at me.

Death Rates in the Pandemic

Over the holiday weekend I looked up death rates for a handful of countries and did some basic number crunching. I hasten to say I did not conduct sophisticated statistical analysis. For example, I extrapolated excess deaths as of mid-December to the end of the year because actual data for that time period wasn’t available yet. Deaths in the USA from Thanksgiving get-togethers are not fully reflected. Surges in multiple countries from Christmas holiday gatherings are missing. The table I created is at the end of this post.

Table columns about excess deaths are probably closer to the truth than columns directly attributed to COVID-19. Deaths above what we would normally experience should mostly be COVID-related. Complete analysis would adjust for reduced deaths from other communicable diseases that can’t spread as easily as usual and increased deaths from other causes such as heart attack or sepsis or cancer that occur because of disrupted health care systems and patients afraid to seek attention early enough to save them.

If you have difficulty seeing my table, just the directly attributed COVID death rates are jawdropping. Italy 1.24 per 1000 people. UK 1.11, Spain 1.08, USA 1.05. But excess deaths are even more so. Italy 1.83, Spain 1.69, USA 1.4, UK 1.21.

Plus, Not All Survivors Bounce Back

We don’t yet know how many survivors are COVID long-haulers. It’s beginning to look like they are a significant proportion of survivors. We also don’t know whether the long-haulers will ever fully recover. The closest common parallels to their long term illness include myalgic encephalomyelitis (M.E.), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia (FM) and multiple sclerosis (MS). Even the mildest forms of MS are progressive degenerative. M.E., CFS and FM appear to be frequently misdiagnosed but are generally lifelong with few recoveries. With all of these, effects vary unpredictably over time.

Implications for society, business and government are substantial. Much of the workforce will be grappling with aftereffects of this pandemic for a long time ahead. We’ve lost and are still losing people who were productive members of society. They leave grieving loved ones and work teams who now have to carry on without them.

We also have people who lived through the disease but can’t perform the way they did before. Perhaps their knowledge and expertise are intact, but they can’t carry as much workload or their capacity is less steady. Perhaps they can’t do as physical a job as they once did. Perhaps they never got sick but now have to take care of someone at home who is a long-hauler.

Implications for Business

Running a business “by the numbers” doesn’t take into account a workforce that has been hit this way and this pervasively. As my friend said, the pandemic has taken or impaired a society-changing proportion of people in both of my countries.

Those of us who own and run businesses ought to adapt. Of course, some won’t, and there will be consequences. People have noticed which businesses try to take care of their workers during this pandemic and which treat workers as expendable. I haven’t been able to find figures about this yet, but anecdotally it’s front and center in many virtual discussions. The best performers, the most knowledgeable, the most capable, are already carefully navigating the hazards of changing jobs in this challenging environment. They are leaving callous businesses, moving to businesses that give a damn about their lives. Or they are staying in jobs they might otherwise leave because they recognize how valuable it is to be allowed to work from home as much as possible, and be sent home to isolate while the entire workplace is deep cleaned when any coworker might be sick.

Work and business have never really been all about money, no matter how much business gurus have tried to make it that way. But the field has tilted now. If we focus on the numbers, on driving peak financial performance at the expense of all else, we’ll end up with only the workers who aren’t good enough to jump ship. The good ones will be where they are appreciated all the time, accommodated when necessary… and where bosses at least try to look after them in a storm.

Quick Look at COVID and Excess Death Rates

Country	Population (1)	COVID Deaths (2)	Pct Pop’n Dead of COVID	COVID Deaths per 1000	Extrapolated Excess Deaths in 2020	Pct Excess Deaths in 2020	Excess Deaths per 1000	Baseline COVID for Excess Calc (3)	Baseline Excess for Extrapolation (3)
Brazil	209,500,000	195,000	0.09%	0.93	199,220	0.19%	0.95	145,969	149,128
Denmark	5,806,000	1,322	0.02%	0.23	331	0.01%	0.06	718	180
France	66,990,000	64,765	0.10%	0.97	69,006	0.10%	1.03	42,174	44,936
Germany	83,020,000	34,145	0.04%	0.41	32,220	0.04%	0.39	9,862	9,306
Italy	60,360,000	74,621	0.12%	1.24	110,744	0.18%	1.83	34,738	51,554
Norway	5,328,000	436	0.01%	0.08	400	0.01%	0.08	257	236
Spain	46,940,000	50,837	0.11%	1.08	79,400	0.17%	1.69	41,431	64,709
UK	66,650,000	74,125	0.11%	1.11	80,878	0.12%	1.21	66,793	72,878
USA	328,200,000	346,000	0.11%	1.05	461,015	0.14%	1.40	233,093	310,576
	generally 2019 figure	Data from Johns Hopkins CSSE						Data from The Economist	Data from The Economist