COVID-19 has gradually became one of the leading causes of death in the US since its outbreak in 2020. It is pivotal to draw a picture of COVID-19-attributed mortality with other leading causes of death, to quantify the influence of this pandemic.
The primary research questions:
Has the pandemic affected the mortality trends in the US?
How is COVID-caused mortality related to sex, age, and race?
The original dataset of this study was exported from AH Monthly Provisional Counts of Deaths for Select Causes of Death by Sex, Age, and Race and Hispanic Origin (https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/AH-Monthly-Provisional-Counts-of-Deaths-for-Select/65mz-jvh5).
There were 3960 observations for death counts, including 14 major causes of death from Jan 2019 to Sep 2021 (33 months in total). After data cleaning, we got 1980 males and 1980 females (1:1) and ten Age categories from “0-4 years” to “85 years and over”. Race were divided into Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black, White, and other.
Notably, Year, Total Month, Sex, Age, and Race all have same sample size for each category, so the death counts among groups could also be considered as the proportions, eligible to be compared directly.
The key variables (leading causes) were:
Natural Cause,
Septicemia,
Malignant neoplasms,
Diabetes mellitus,
Alzheimer disease,
Influenza and pneumonia,
Chronic lower respiratory diseases,
Other diseases of respiratory system ,
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis,
Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified,
Diseases of heart,
Cerebrovascular diseases,
COVID-19 (Multiple Cause of Death),
COVID-19 ( Underlying Cause of Death)
The top 3 causes of death were: natural cause, heart disease, and malignant neoplasms. The trend of natural cause line were similar to the all causes line and the difference between their death counts at all months were pretty small, indicating that natural cause was the most major cause of death. Except the drastic increase of COVID-caused death counts in 2020, all the other causes’ death counts have remained relatively stable.
Narrowing down to COVID-19 causes, before Month 14 (Feb 2020), there was no COVID-19-attributed mortality in the US. Then for both causes, average death counts started to increase from Feb 2020, the highest peak was at Month 25 (Jan 2021).
Females had smaller COVID-caused average death counts than males in 2020 and 2021, indicating that men might have higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than women.
The overall pattern was: COVID-caused average death counts increased with age. In 2021, the equals to or older than 85 years old group got smaller counts than 75-84 years old group, which required future analysis.
We can find the same pattern in 2020 and 2021. White people got the highest average death counts, while Indian/ Alaska Native had smallest mortality (excluding Other group). From small to large average death counts, the order is: Other, Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black, Hispanic, White.
This research of mortality comparison by different causes first showed that except for two COVID-19 causes, all other leading causes of death had stable trends from 2019 to 2021. The top 3 leading causes were natural cause, heart disease, and tumor. The COVID-caused mortality started at Feb 2020 and reached it peak at Jan 2021. For different sex, age, and race groups, there were obvious difference of average COVID-caused death counts. Females tended to had smaller average death counts than males, elder people tended to had higher average mortality than young people. White people got the highest average death counts, while Indian/ Alaska Native had smallest mortality. In conclusion, COVID-19 has obviously affected the mortality trend in the US.
Copyright © 2022, Yumeng Gao.