Rommel et al. (1) suggest that people who died of COVID-19 lost 9.6 years of life. As the median age of COVID-19 deaths is 84 years, they supposedly would have reached 94 years of age if the disease had been prevented. It would be astonishing if specifically people with COVID-19 would have had such an above-average life expectancy. Where is the error?
The authors use the methodology of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study (2), but without a reference value. The GBD study calculates how many years of life are lost due to death for 359 diseases. For this, the age at death of the affected person is subtracted from the average residual life expectancy of their peers. In Germany, 80-year-old men have a residual life expectancy of 8.1 years (3). There is no point in calculating this number for a single disease without reference to the general population and other causes of death. For this reason, years of life lost per 100000 inhabitants/year in the GBD study are comparatively reported for many diseases.
Lower respiratory tract infections lead to a global loss of 1 524 years of life/100000 inhabitants/year. If the 305 641 years of life lost due to COVID-19 are calculated for the population, there were 368 years of life lost/100000 inhabitants due to COVID-19 in 2020 in Germany. This corresponds to about 25% of the total loss due to lower respiratory infections. For all causes of death, the GBD study shows a loss of 32797 years of life/100000 inhabitants / year; in other words, almost 100 times greater than the loss due to COVID-19.
The comorbidity of those who died of COVID-19 is also not taken into account. The years of life are calculated from the average residual life expectancy without taking into account the state of health. Many people who died of COVID-19 have a reduced life expectancy due to comorbidities. Therefore, the average value for the age group cannot be assumed. Social status is also missing: a low social status is associated with an increased risk of dying from COVID-19 and an overall lower life expectancy.
In the end, the authors themselves put it into perspective by stating that “the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany had reached the approximate level of severity of a severe influenza wave”.
References
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