#COVID-19 to make Top 10 leading causes of death in US, data experts say

The coronavirus is on track to become one of the leading causes of death in the US in 2020.

It’s not official — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can’t say for sure until the end of the year. However, leading statisticians with the agency confirmed that they anticipate COVID-19 to make the Top 10 list.

“We know that based on the # of COVID-19 deaths so far in 2020, it will end up as a Top 10 leading cause of death but won’t know exactly how high it will rank until next year,” CDC data experts told CNN via e-mail.

“Heart Disease and Cancer, the two leading causes of death in the U.S., account for more than half of all deaths in the US each year and that isn’t expected to change,” they added.

Researchers base their rankings on death certificates issued during the full calendar year. We won’t know the full scope of the impact of COVID-19 until 2021. The year 2018 represents the most up-to-date information on leading causes of death among Americans:

1. Heart disease (655,381)
2. Cancer (599,274)
3. Unintentional injury (167,127)
4. Chronic lower respiratory disease (159,486)
5. Stroke (147,810)
6. Alzheimer’s disease (122,019)
7. Diabetes (84,946)
8. Flu and pneumonia (59,120)
9. Nephritis (51,386)
10. Suicide (48,344)

So far this year, the coronavirus has been attributed to more than 144,000 deaths nationally, although data scientists at the University of Washington recently predicted that number to balloon to over 200,000 by October — which would put COVID-19 handily in the No. 3 spot.

At the time of their report, Dr. Christopher Murray, director of the university’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said in a statement, “If the US is unable to check the growth in September, we could be facing worsening trends in October, November, and the following months if the pandemic, as we expect, follows pneumonia seasonality.”

Comparisons with the flu have lingered since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, but hindsight has revealed that isn’t the case. While the two viral illnesses share a host of respiratory symptoms, COVID-19 has set itself apart with some unprecedented side effects, including a potentially permanent loss of taste and smell as well as the possibility of developing a deadly, full-body inflammatory response, called Kawasaki disease, in children.

But it’s the staggering death toll that cements the coronavirus as one of the deadliest viral killers to sweep the country in over a century — since the flu pandemic of 1918 which killed an estimated 675,000 Americans, and 50 million worldwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control. At that time, there existed no medical therapy for the H1N1 virus, and infection prevention was limited to isolation, vigilant hygiene and social distancing.

Nevertheless, pathology scientists are reticent to pit past epidemics against our current public health crisis.

Historian Mari Webel and virologist Megan Culler Freeman, both at the University of Pittsburgh, have cautioned against following past models in order to predict how COVID-19 will act, because the two pathogens behave and replicate in very different ways. In a Smithsonian Magazine editorial published in June, they wrote, “We believe this comparison of two pandemics has contributed to public confusion about what to expect from ‘flattening the curve.’ ”

According to Webel and Freeman, future waves of SARS-CoV-2 “will not be driven by … mutation or virulence,” as is generally the case with influenza, “but by the further exposure of nonimmune people to the virus.”

“As SARS-CoV-2 continues to circulate in nonimmune populations globally, physical distancing and mask-wearing will keep its spread in check and, ideally, keep infection and death rates steady,” they explained.

“Future spikes in COVID-19 cases and deaths will very likely be driven by what people do.”