A new paper was released by the National Bureau of Economic Research that calculated that that the Social Security Administration has saved $200 Billion with the excess deaths from covid. What a deal!
The paper calculates there were 1.4 million excess deaths as of January 2023 reducing future outlays by $205 Billion primarily by reducing future benefits being paid out. It determined there were about 1.3 million excess deaths, primarily from men, blacks, hispanics and older age groups.
What’s surprising to me is, according to the graph above, the amount of excess deaths in 2020 when the virus was at its most deadly and the amount of deaths in 2021 when full-scale vaccination efforts were in place are roughly equal to my eye. I would have expected that if the vaccine were as effective as we were told, the drop off in deaths at that time would have been far more substantial.
The part of this that is most worrying to me is now there is proof that a wide-spread pandemic is a fantastic way for the government to save money. It is reminiscent of the movie “Logan’s Run” but instead of killing off everyone at 30, we should wait until they are 65 and expecting to receive their retirement benefits.
Instead of conspiracy theories (which are always fun and have been proven with alarming regularity as of late) let’s review some of the things covid taught us about how to protect ourselves.
#1 High Blood Sugar Kills. It was no accident that Americans were far more susceptible to covid than other countries. Our Type 2 Diabetes rates are absolutely off the charts and the rates of pre-diabetes are even worse. It looks like the people with the worse control of their blood sugar like diabetics and the elderly were the ones most at risk of the virus. The fix for this is easy, stop eating foods that raise your blood sugar and start putting on as much muscle as you can. There is also medication like Metformin you can take to control your blood sugar levels but I haven’t seen any data that suggests people on Metformin had a lower death rate from covid.
#2 Monitor your Vitamin D Levels. We learned very early on in the pandemic that the death rate from covid was inversely correlated with vitamin D levels. Again, this has a simple fix. You can either take a vitamin D supplement or commit to spending more time in the sun. It doesn’t take much, 15-20 minutes a day of sunlight on as much exposed skin as you can manage.
#3 Don’t Be Frail. There’s nothing you can do about your age but there’s no reason you have to become fragile and frail as you age. This is about eating plenty of healthy foods, especially protein, and keeping as much muscle as you can as you age. We lose about 1% of muscle per year past 35 years old so our biology is working against us. It takes the effort of a regular daily or weekly exercise routine to keep your strength where it needs to be. I would also include stretching as that also protects from injury which typically causes muscle wasting to increase.
But covid is over, right? Well maybe but who knows what tomorrow will bring. This whole experience has really opened my eyes to a lot of things I didn’t know about. I would never have imagined our government would be funding labs whose entire job is to make viruses capable of killing us but here we are. I can’t unlearn that. And this report shows a possible financial incentive for killing off the oldest among us. I can’t unlearn that either.
Our only chance is to take control of as many of the variables as we can and the biggest one is our personal health and the health of our families. I hope you read this post and this blog and put as many of these ideas into action as you can.
Have you already started? What changes have you seen in your health? I would love to know in the comments below!
