A new study provides a heartbreaking reminder of the pain caused by the covid-19 pandemic. It is estimated that nearly 40,000 children in the United States have lost at least one parent due to viral disease since February this year. The study also found that more than 100,000 children would have lost a parent if the virus had been allowed to run unrestricted.
There have been previous attempts to account the pain caused by pandemic deaths in the US, now at over half a million. A recent March poll, for example, found that almost one in five Americans knew someone who had personally died of covid-19. But this study, published In JAMA Pediatrics, he seems to be the first to focus on children specifically.
“There is a narrative that children are less affected by the virus because they do not tend to get as sick and have lower mortality than older adults,” wrote study author Rachel Margolis, a sociologist and demographer at Western University in Ontario, Canada told Gizmodo in an email. “However, children are very affected by the death of family members, so in this paper, we examined how often children lose a parent.
Margolis and her colleagues relied on previous research to assess the impact of any death on family members. In this case, they tried to estimate the average number of children under the age of 18 who would be connected to a single covid-19 death, based on what we know about the US population and pandemic-related deaths so far. They also compared what they found with the estimated number of children who would lose a parent in a non-pandemic year.
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On average, the authors calculated that every covid-19 death in the United States would likely leave 0.078 children without a parent. This adds up quickly when you consider how many people have died in the US due to the pandemic.
Between February 2020 and February 2021, their best estimate was that 37,300 children lost at least one parent to covid-19, based on the approximately 479,000 documented deaths during that period. It has been estimated that most of these children are in their teens. When considering the excess of deaths – deaths above the annual average of the direct and indirect number of covid-19 – they estimated that 43,000 children lost a parent to the pandemic. Compared to a normal year, they also calculated that the pandemic led to an increase from 17.5% to 20.2% of parental deaths.
“For comparison, the attacks of September 11, 2001 left 3,000 children without a parent,” the authors wrote. “The burden will become heavier as the death toll continues to rise.”
Indeed, as of February, about 70,000 Americans have died of covid-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And while our highly effective vaccines should soon turn the tide against the pandemic, hundreds of people die every day, while hospitalizations and new daily cases remain relatively high. However, things could have been worse. In a worst-case scenario where vaccines did not appear and the pandemic killed 1.5 million people in the United States before the herd’s immunity was reached, the authors estimated that probably 116,900 children would have lost a parent.
Even once the pandemic is over, there will be those left behind to mourn the people lost by it. Another study last year by some of the same authors behind this new research, found that every covid-19 death in the US leaves behind about 9 family members on average. And, as with the pandemic itself, these losses will disproportionately affect more groups than others. In this current study, black children accounted for 20% of parental deaths, despite the fact that they accounted for only 14% of children in general.
“Our research shows that children face different types of risk than those faced by older adults, but they are not immune,” Margolis said. “In addition, many adults have lost their parents or other family members. There are serious consequences of grief, especially for children at high risk of poor mental health and economic stress. ”
While the elderly remain the most vulnerable to death from covid-19, the largely incessant pandemic has claimed the lives of many young Americans. Conformable CDC data, more than 100,000 people under the age of 65 died because of it. Given their results, researchers are advocating for more to be done to help people, especially children, most directly affected by all these deaths.
“My hope is that as we emerge from the pandemic, we will take the pain process seriously. I would like to see more governments offering mourning leave, “Margolis said. “In addition, for children who have lost a parent, we need to find out who these children are, connect them to local services and help them receive short- and long-term support. We know that losing a parent is difficult in the best of times. It is even more difficult when we cannot gather and support each other. ”
This article was updated with comments from one of the study’s authors.