The Million Russian Victims of Covid Pandemic Died on Average 14 Years Prematurely, New Study Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 24 – There were more than one million excess deaths among Russian residents during the two years of the covid pandemic, according to Austria’s International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, with each dying on average 14 years before one would have expected him or her to expire.

            It is difficult to compute the losses from the pandemic, experts say. Figures are incomplete and reasons for deaths are often misassigned. But there is one way that allows for a fuller picture of the costs of the pandemic and that is to use the concept of excess deaths in particular periods.

              This figure includes cases of death not only assigned to the virus as such but those who suffered from quarantine, limits on movements, delayed operations and the like. And that provides a fuller picture of just how much of a cost the pandemic inflicted on the Russian Federation.

            That is the method the International Institute used, relying on figures published by the Russian government’s statistical arm, Rosstat. Using this approach, it found the pandemic was directly or indirectly responsible for more than a million deaths (medicalxpress.com/news/2022-11-true-human-pandemic-russia.html and newizv.ru/news/science/24-11-2022/minus-million-zhurnal-plos-one-opublikoval-issledovanie-smertnosti-ot-kovida-v-rossii).

            The study found that the number of excess deaths varied widely by region, with some regions suffering a 27 percent increase in deaths during the pandemic while others suffered as much as 52 percent. It also calculated that on average, all these deaths occurred 14 years earlier than the life expectancies of the people involved.