The Covid-19 Pandemic (When posting new information, please cite sources)

How Covid affected the worlds life expectancy

https://apple.news/ABH6rKlxqRFCdIl9MXoOAbg

Global life expectancy fell by 1.6 years during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Australia was one of the few countries where people were still expected to live longer.

It found almost every country in the world experienced sharp dips in life expectancy in 2020 and 2021, reversing the long-standing trend of people living longer. 

Australia and New Zealand were among only 32 countries and territories, out of 204 studied, to record an increase in life expectancy across the first two years of the pandemic. 

Globally, life expectancy dropped from 73.3 years in 2019 before the pandemic, to 71.7 in 2021. 

For women, life expectancy fell from 76 years to 74.8 years. For men, life expectancy dropped from 70.8 years to 69 years. 

Australians fared much better than the global average. Their life expectancy was 83.4 years in 2021, up slightly from 83.2 in 2019. Women were expected to live until 85.6 years old, and men until they were 81.2 years old.

In the United States, where more than 1 million people are thought to have died due to COVID-19, life expectancy fell from 79.1 years in 2019 to 77.1 years in 2021.

The University of Washington study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, updates estimates in the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021, and drew on the expertise of more than 11,000 collaborators across more than 160 countries and territories.

Regards to all

Matildagirl

@matildagirl Thank you for this information.  Did they or anyone speculate about why Australians did better than other countries?

@jeanne-mayell 

Hi Jeanne,

It was surprising in a way, how law abiding we actually were, that we just followed the recommendations, we were in lockdown, we wore masks, we worked from home, socially distanced, used sanitizers, the government supported people who couldn’t work from home like hospitality workers, the homeless were housed in motels. As soon as vaccines were available the government started the vaccination process for free, people got vaccinated. We knew we were all in the same boat so we got on with it.

Each states premier really rose to the occasion, shut borders to prevent their states population from outbreaks. Western Australia shut their borders and they lived normal lives and were the last state to open up similar to how NZ handled Covid, borders closed, isolation until there was no Covid then normal lives. 

Poor old Victoria was hit hard and had much longer lockdowns than the rest of us.

Eventually we had to open up to the world like everyone did and it still is here but now everyone just seems to accept it’s here to stay, be sensible, isolate if you catch it, get on with life, keep your vaccinations up to date, though this bit seems to be waning.

Hope that helps

Regards

Matildagirl

@jeanne-mayell 

Hi Jeanne,

thinking more about that time, masks were mandatory, if you caught Covid you had to isolate for 14 days, that was mandatory.  People coming in from overseas were required to isolate for 14 days in their hotel room, they weren’t allowed out of the rooms in that time, their meals were left for them outside the door. A lot of people found that hard to handle. This was paid by the government, the side effect was the large hotels were able to keep functioning and keep staff on. This was the same thing New Zealand did and eventually we were able to resume going to each others countries because we didn’t have the virus without having to isolate. There were a couple of shutdowns with this as there would be an outbreak when it snuck in.  Once the world started opening up and we had to as well, the cases rose again, but not as severe as originally as we had a very high percentage of vaccinated people by then, I think it was in the 90s percentage wise.

I guess it was quite draconian in a lot of ways, but it saved a lot of lives and we knew that it was with the best intentions to try and keep us safe. Eventually there was push back and restrictions were relaxed. We basically ignore it now, there was an increase over the last Xmas summer period because of a new variation going around the world again. I caught it over New Year, stayed at home for 10 days, it wasn’t required to isolate but I thought that was sensible, gave it to my husband but not anyone else as far as I know.

It seems a long time ago now, 2020,21 we had to stay at home but we’re allowed out to exercise, I would go for a walk and run into friends and neighbours doing the same thing, we would all stand a distance away from each other and have a chat, walk a bit further have another chat, go home and my event of the day would be to do some housework, watch tv, read a book, cook dinner, go to the supermarket, masked and buy food. It was a weird time.

Regards

Matildagirl