BOSTON — More than 222,000 Americans have died due to COVID-19 since the outbreak began in mid-March.
A world-renowned Harvard scientist added up the number of years all those people might have lived had they reached a typical life expectancy and said what he discovered truly surprised him.
Doctor Stephen Elledge, who is the Gregor Mendel Professor of Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, crunched data about American COVID-19 deaths.
“When I added up all the numbers and it was 2.5 million. I was just stunned because that is such a huge number,” said Elledge.
Elledge posted results of his work online, which you can find here. He said the number is staggering and has a ripple effect.
“When you hear that you’re like wow, that’s a lot of years of people’s lives that are gone and all the things they do in a year and how they ripple through society it’s a tremendous loss,” said Elledge.
Elledge said he also often hears that COVID-19 is a disease of the elderly, but what he discovered is that nearly half of those years lost were taken from people under the age of 65.
“The actual data was actually very different from what people were saying and, so yeah, this was a real shock to me and I thought I better write this up and let people know about it," said Elledge.
His analysis did not break down potential years lost by race and ethnicity.
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