How Covid-19 death data honors lives lost

How Covid-19 death data honors lives lost

 

As more and more Americans lose loved ones to Covid-19 or fall ill themselves, summarizing very human experiences of fear and grief into statistics may feel cold.   "Numbers can be a bit sterile," said Bob Anderson, the CDC's chief mortality statistician. "But these numbers are people -- mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. I have to constantly remind myself of that."   Anderson has worked through the HIV epidemic, the opioid epidemic and more over the 24 years he's been in this role. But the Covid-19 pandemic is different, he said.   "Those were concerning, of course, and the numbers were relatively large, but not on the scale that we're seeing the Covid deaths," he said. "This is not something we've had to deal with."   Mortality data are widely used to help prevent disease, by ensuring resources are allocated properly and programs are assessed comprehensively. And it's uniquely personal.   "As far as health data go, mortality data is really the only dataset in which we have a record for each person," Anderson said.   Amid the pandemic, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has found a way to respect both the anonymity required of the data and the individual life behind each Covid-19 death record.   At the start of his press briefings each Monday, Wednesday and Friday -- before moving into the graphs and trends -- Justice reads through each new death, identifying the West Virginians who have recently lost their lives to Covid-19 with these data points: age, gender and home county.   Even without knowing their names, Justice said the connection is personal to him.   "As you're moving through the age and the gender and the county, you're thinking across West Virginia and the close-knit, loving people that live here. Oftentimes, my mind drifts to situations where I've been in someone's home in a specific county or I've been on a trout stream in a specific county," Justice said.   "In my mind I'm seeing families in these communities at a dinner table or on a picnic or on a trout stream. It's overwhelming at times."