Maybe it is just because I want to put that time period out of my mind but I don’t think of the global pandemic of 2020-2021 very often anymore.  It was a time period that I was pretty much home-bound and cautionary.  And, I remember it as a time of great uncertainty for many things — including Death Care.

 

It’s maybe why I was surprised this past weekend to see this article from the Los Angeles Times titled “Covid-19 is on the upswing in California.  How bad will it get this summer?”  Here’s a part of that article and where the headline probably came from

 

“For the week that ended July 18, 3.4% of COVID tests in California came back positive. That’s lower than at the same time in the prior two years, but it’s still an increase from a month ago, when the test positivity rate was 1.15%. . . . . .Worldwide, COVID activity was generally low and stable for the last week of June, according to the World Health Organization, although there was elevated activity or increases in parts of Latin America, northern Europe, parts of Africa and Southeast Asia.”

 

The article was an interesting read for me and reminded me of how difficult it was for Death Care professionals during that time period.  The statistics below, that come from that article and the Center for Disease Control, show how busy Death Care professionals were.

 

As you can see from the table below, the United States and its Death Care workforce cared for 463,267 Covid-19 deaths in 2021.  That has now dropped to 20,685 Covid-19 deaths in 2025, but as the article pointed out, “That is still a significant number of deaths, experts say, and the virus can still lead to development of long COVID and other health problems.”

 

Year	Covid-19 Deaths	U.S. Deaths	Pct. Covid
2020	385,676	3,383,000	11.40%
2021	463,267	3,464,000	13.30%
2022	247,168	3,279,000	7.50%
2023	76,055	3,090,000	2.40%
2024	47,541	3,072,000	1.50%
2025	20,685	3,094,000	0.60%

 

Funeral Director Daily take:  First of all, when you look at the number of deaths overall, the United States seems to be back on the projection of death numbers that was trending before the pandemic.   The Center for Disease Control estimates a flat death number for 2026 that will be right in the same area as the 2025 numbers.  Their actual projection is 3,050,000 to 3,100,000.

 

During the pandemic much was said of “pull-forward” deaths.  Those were deaths that happened, because of Covid-19, when absent Covid-19 that person would have lived a longer time.  It was speculated that those premature-dated deaths would lower the number of deaths annually moving forward.  While it is easy to see that there were peaks in the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 and probably even 2022, it appears that the total annual death numbers have now came back to anticipated levels from which they will continue to grow slightly simply due to the number of members of our population in their older years.

 

Births to Deaths:  The CDC also says this about the number of Deaths to the number of Births in the country:  “The crude death rate is estimated at approximately 9.33 deaths per 1,000 people, reflecting a slowly aging population where annual deaths will closely approach annual births ahead of a projected crossover near 2030.”

 

The Congressional Budget Office and their Projections:  Here is the outlook for demographic changes in the United States from 2025 to 2055 as issued by the Congressional Budget Office.  A couple of narratives that have been atributed to the CBO include these:

 

1. “. . . .as the large Baby Boomer generation ages, annual deaths in the United States are projected to climb significantly, though standard long-term federal models place total annual deaths moving well past 3.5 million and heading toward 4 million in the decades following 2030–2040. “
2.  “As the massive population cohort of older adults moves deeper into advanced age groups over the next 30 years, total annual mortality counts will continue a steady upward trajectory toward the 4 million mark. “

 

Causes of Death:  When you look at the table included in this article and see the number of Covid-19 deaths in 2020 and 2021 one needs to know that in those years Covid-19 ranked as the 3rd leading cause of death in both of those years.  By 2024, the disease had dropped to the 15th leading cause of death.

 

Here is the listing of the leading causes of death for 2024 from the Center for Disease Control.

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• Landmark Funeral Group partners with Physicians Mutual and Preccoa to expand funeral preplanning services.  EIN Presswire
• Landmark Funeral Group website
• New Vermont facility turns human bodies into soil.  Seven Days (VT)
• Earth Funeral seeks to legalize human compsoting in North Carolina  WSOC TV – Charlotte (NC)
• The Greenest Goodbye:  Human composting and the science of becoming soil.  Geekwire

 

 

Enter your e-mail below to join the 3,482 others who receive Funeral Director Daily articles daily

 

“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”