Why Are Death and Disability Rising Among Young Americans?

Guest Post by Pierre Kory and Mary Beth Pfeiffer

America’s labor force is facing a crisis, and no one knows exactly why. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of American adults considered unable to work grew by more than 3.5 million since January 2020, with 1.5 million added just in the first nine months of this year.

That’s a concerning 12 percent hike. But among the labor force, in particular, the disability number grew an astonishing 33 percent since January 2020. Over the same time period, America has seen what one insurance insider calls an “open secret” of increased excess deaths—the number of people dying above what is expected. These shocking developments are surely contributing to ongoing labor shortages. People are leaving work at younger ages, in greater numbers, and from diseases seen mostly in later life.

We need an unbiased, nonpartisan investigation into this troubling trend. Record-high rates of incapacitation threaten our economy and signal continuing waves of early death.

Consider that 25 percent more 15-to-19-year-olds than expected—about a thousand young people—died in the first five months of 2023, according to an analysis of federal data. They are among 87,000 additional people who died in those months. Compared to pre-pandemic numbers, those Americans should still be alive.

While government agencies invest little effort in examining these worrisome developments, some in the insurance industry are sounding the alarm. Finance and indemnity experts in the nonprofit Insurance Collaboration to Save Lives (ICSL) are urging insurers to address the simmering health problems reflected in disability statistics.

Teresa Winer, an insurance regulator for the state of Georgia, joined the group after seeing mounting deaths in company reports. A survey of insurance experts like her predicted by a four-to-one margin that the trend would last three years. These deaths are often broadly ascribed to long COVID, but the condition is not well enough defined to draw this conclusion. According to the American Medical Association, “the enigma of long COVID continues to baffle researchers,” and “the link between infection and long-term symptoms remains poorly understood.”

Bret Swanson, chair of the Indiana Public Retirement System and a member of ICSL, believes a better explanation is needed. “We’ve got an actual, genuine tsunami and, in some way, it is overwhelming what we had with COVID itself,” he told us. “Figure out why.” Other experts in the group called these trends the “tip of the iceberg” and a “wildfire loose.”

This post-pandemic scourge can be ferreted out in a U.S. Centers for Disease Control online database called WONDER. Mary Pat Campbell, an actuarial expert, unearthed distressing trends in the data.

At COVID-19’s peak, the vast majority of excess deaths were among the elderly and immune-compromised. But as COVID became milder, Campbell found unprecedented increases in death rates—from all causes, not just COVID—in prime-of-life adults compared with 2019. In early 30-somethings, for example, mortality ran 42 percent above normal in 2021, 30 percent in 2022, and 24 percent from January to May 2023, long after the COVID emergency ended.

“Thirty percent is a huge increase in mortality,” Campbell explained. “Ten percent is huge. A lot of people just have no idea.” Her findings mirror ongoing excess deaths tracked in the U.S. and other countries by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. A U.S. Society of Actuaries report from May 2023 also found ongoing, unexpectedly high deaths in working people with life insurance—which it concluded could not be explained by COVID alone. (COVID deaths dropped by half from 2021 to 2022.)

CDC data revealed that deaths from liver disease in 20-to-44-year-olds rose 58 percent on average across the three pandemic years over the 2019 baseline. That means 8,000 more people lost. Kidney disease rates in 40-to-44-year-olds rose 30 percent in 2022 over 2019. Deaths from cerebrovascular disease, most often stroke, in 35-to-39-year-olds jumped 17 percent in 2022. Heart disease rates in that group jumped 12 percent.

Drug deaths have hit America hard too. But unlike the toll of liver and kidney disease on the young, overdose deaths—37,000 more in 2022 than in 2019—surged in every group from age 10-14 to 80-84. These people are counted among the 423,000 excess deaths in 2022.

A thorough investigation of these trends should consider what role official responses to the pandemic may have played. Lockdowns clearly had detrimental effects. And reports of vaccine-related injuries and deaths merit more deliberate, transparent analysis—especially in light of evidence that low-risk populations might have benefited more from COVID-induced natural immunity.

Some immediate steps can be taken to avert further disability and death, such as testing more people for markers of looming liver and kidney disease, susceptibility to blood clots, and heart problems. But until we fully understand what’s causing this wave of destruction, we won’t know how to end it.

Dr. Pierre Kory, M.D., is president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an investigative reporter and author.

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