POPCOM said a total of 768,504 deaths have been registered across the country in the first 11 months of 2021—translating to a mortality rate of 6.98 per thousand. This number was higher by 154,562 than the deaths listed in the entire 2020 when around 5.8 per 1,000 Filipinos died, it added....
now, Covid was listed as the cause of death in 75 000 people, but the highest cause of death was ischemic heart disease.
this might be because a lot of deaths from old age are listed here, or maybe not: Because there also were increases in deaths from diabetes, stroke, hypertension and cancer.
Fact check: One big change in medicine from treating people to preventing disease came in the 1960s and 1970s when medicine to lower blood pressure and diuretics to treat congestive heart failure were developed.
But these medicines cost money: and with the pandemic, I suspect a lot of folks are not buying their medicine, or are missing days when they run out of pills because they can't afford any more.
Another cause of heart disease is that people eat better, so they develop higher cholesterol.
Traditional diet is low in fat so not a lot of ASCVD: on the other hand, traditional diet is very high in salt, so deaths and strokes and heart attacks from high blood pressure are common.
one also wonders about drug and alcohol related deaths: Duterte's war on drugs here was mainly a war against Shabu, i.e. meth, which increases blood pressure and can cause heart attacks. We had a neighbor's daughter die of this.
But we also have sudden cardiac deaths in young men that is probably a congenital conduction defect of the heart. aka Bangugut.
And we are now seeing a lot of diabetes here, in people who are thin and not on an American diet. Is this new? I have no idea. But again diabetes can increase cardiovascular disease and cause renal failure and high blood pressure.
We also see deaths from pre eclampsia and other maternal deaths. Have these deaths increased because pregnancy is a risk for covid? And how many died because of no prenatal care due to the price of seeing a midwife early in pregnancy? I have no idea.
and what about children? We had a respiratory disease going around recently: covid or RSV? One tested positive for RSV, a common viral disease of young children. But then another tested positive for Dengue.
And remember: even though most moms do breast feed up to a year, still buying milk for toddlers or buying high protein food is expensive, so one wonders if the rate of malnutrition has gone up. And of course, malnourished kids (and adults for that matter) can die of illnesses that a well nourished person would survive: not just things like measles but chest colds, infected wounds, urinary infections etc.
Sigh.
This is where I worry: Because with the higher price of fertilizer and diesel, the price of food will soon increase. True, the government does help with subsidized rice for the poor, but what about protein?
Sigh.
The statistics for 2021 are not out yet, so it will be awhile until the whole picture of the damage done by the epidemic and the economic problems will be seen.
Luckily people have extended families to help them, including money from their overseas family members. But alas, this too has gone down and jobs in the Middle East, cruise ships, etc. are also being affected.
things like this might help:
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update: From Yahoonews: Lockdowns only decreased covid deaths a small amount:
...Lockdowns during the first COVID-19 wave in the spring of 2020 only reduced COVID-19 mortality by .2% in the U.S. and Europe, according to a Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of several studies. "While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted," the researchers wrote. "In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument."
The researchers – Johns Hopkins University economics professor Steve Hanke, Lund University economics professor Lars Jonung, and special advisor at Copenhagen's Center for Political Studies Jonas Herby – analyzed the effects of lockdown measures such as school shutdowns, business closures, and mask mandates on COVID-19 deaths. "We find little to no evidence that mandated lockdowns in Europe and the United States had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality rates," the researchers wrote. The researchers also examined shelter-in-place orders, finding that they reduced COVID-19 mortality by 2.9%.
headsup Instapundit
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