The COVID-19 Pandemic is Reeking Unprecedented Havoc on the World- And It Seems Not Likely to End Anytime Soon
Unless you have been living under a rock since early 2020, you know that the world as we know it has changed drastically. And not at all in a good way. The disease known as COVID-19 has completely flipped the lives of the whole entire global population upside down. Our way of life has just been changed into something we have never seen before.We are living through something that is going to be put in the history books and talked about for years to come. Whether it be the increased deaths around the world due to COVID, or the ever-changing vaccine requirements, or the now almost normality of having to wear a mask, life is totally different now than it was before 2020. While I personally have not lost any family members due to COVID, I am sure that a lot of people reading this have. My motivation for writing this op-ed is I want to show some numbers that support this title and really try to develop an understanding of exactly how this pandemic is changing life as we know it. I know my life has certainly been changed, and I would assume everyone reading this can say the same thing. None of us could have ever imagined this pandemic even happening in the first place, much less being around for how long it has been and will continue to be. This op-ed is all about how COVID has changed the world in a very negative way and how it seems like it will not be going away any time soon.
A good place to start establishing some numbers would be to look at the overall death numbers. To do this, I used the “CDC_deaths_2014_2022.csv” dataset from week 2 of this class. The CDC, or the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, collects data about death numbers for the United States. This specific CSV file contains data from 2014 until right now. Having some data from the pre-COVID era will be useful for comparison sake. The CDC has played a key role in containing and understanding the pandemic with their guidelines and recommendations, and all the data they collect about deaths and cause of deaths is very helpful too. So, I made a table showing all the death numbers each year from 2014–2021 at the midpoint of the year, which is week 26. Here is that table
As you can see, these numbers are not just COVID related deaths. It is all cause. However, there is a noticeable increase in numbers between 2019 and 2020. 2019’s number is 51,826. It then increases by roughly 6,000 to 57,896 in 2020. And what happened in 2020 that might have played a significant role in this increase? You guessed it: COVID. I highly doubt that 6,000 more people just happened to die with no new thing happening in the world. This is probably the most obvious way in which COVID has changed the world. While COVID does not have a very high mortality rate, it is still definitely capable of killing people and is not something that should be taken too lightly. COVID is known to kill older people and people with weaker immune systems, and I am sure some of you reading this have unfortunately lost some grandparents to COVID. Another thing I will mention about this table is the slight decrease from 2020 to 2021. That makes sense to me because by 2021 the vaccine was starting to come out and we knew more about it so we were able to fight it better than in 2020.
I will now be looking at a line graph to see the trends of All Cause deaths over the years visualized. Here is that graph
This chart aligns with the table, as you can see the huge jump in 2020 and 2021. There is another visualization that goes along with this one that I think will help add some context. I created a visualization of just COVID related deaths. Here it is
So it makes sense that the COVID deaths from 2014–2019 would be at zero since the pandemic was not around then. And obviously you see the big jump when the pandemic hit in 2020. This shows that the COVID deaths for the most part caused the increase in All Cause deaths. In 2020, there were roughly 5000 COVID deaths, and the All Cause increased by roughly 6,000 from 2019 to 2020. So while COVID did not account for all of those deaths, it was a significant portion. While there were more COVID deaths in 2021 than in 2020, as I mentioned earlier there was actually a slight decrease in All Cause deaths because of things like the vaccine and a better awareness of how to fight COVID, and perhaps a decrease in other kinds of deaths not related to COVID.
So, I think it is clear to see that COVID has only caused more deaths since it first hit in 2020. It is so unfortunate to see how COVID has affected so many people in such a tragic way. And the worst part is it will only continue for at least the next couple of years I would imagine. It is good to see that the vaccine is available and more and more people are starting to get it, but you can still test positive even if you are vaccinated. I think one important thing to acknowledge here is that these numbers may not be absolutely perfect, but the CDC is our best source of information and anything related to COVID, so that is why I chose to use their data. I think it is important to acknowledge that COVID has completely changed everyone’s reality and living with the pandemic has now become the new “normal”. It is that way for me at least. I hope whoever is reading this post got some value out of it. While I know the topic is not too original, it is something that I felt inclined to write about because of how relatable it is.