During the initial “stay at home” orders, most emergency rooms were eerily quiet. Patients were not seeing their primary care physicians for preventative visits, and elective preventive procedures, such as colonoscopies or mammograms, were being deferred. Emergency room visits for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes were abnormally low. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that “emergency department visits declined by 23% for heart attacks, 20% for strokes and 10% for uncontrolled high blood sugar in people with diabetes.” With the high level of stress and fear of contracting COVID-19, people were not seeking medical care.
In a nationwide study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in July, they found “huge increases in excess deaths from underlying causes such as diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease.” This was only over the course of March to April. During that time, some states had a nearly 400% increase in deaths from heart disease and 350% increase in deaths from diabetes.
The delay in seeking medical care or treatment has led to people being sicker and more likely to die from their worsening underlying disease or from COVID-19 due to their deteriorating medical condition.
Alzheimer’s is another disease that has taken many more lives during the pandemic. As reported by the Wall Street Journal in June, Alzheimers and dementia-related deaths average about 266,000 per year, but in the early pandemic months this has already increased by 15,000.
The data being analyzed thus far are from the beginning months of the pandemic. As the year progresses, these “excess” deaths that are unrelated to COVID-19 will continue to be reported.
Medical professionals are speaking out against the lockdown due to these adverse outcomes. Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard; Dr. Sunetra Gupta, a professor at Oxford University; and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford University Medical School are among those who have been vocal about the harms of the lockdown. They have begun an online petition, already signed by over 34,000 medical professionals, that states, “As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies…Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short- and long-term public health.”
