Kids Without Parents: The Toll of the Coronavirus Pandemic

In 2020, the number of kids who lost a parent was 20% higher than normal.

Welcome to Impact Factor, your weekly dose of commentary on a new medical study. I’m Dr. F. Perry Wilson of the Yale School of Medicine.

We have passed through a year of bereavement, a year of grief. The latest numbers, published in a research letter in JAMA found that the excess mortality in the United States from March 1st, 2020 to January 2, 2021 totaled 522,368 individuals. Deaths were 22% higher than expected over that period — the typical yearly variance is about 2% in either direction.

Each of those deaths ripple through the lives of those left behind. A simulation study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of sciences found that each COVID-19 death left nine close family members bereaved.

I think the most succinct way I’ve heard the effect of the death of a loved one described came from C.S Lewis who wrote “The death of a beloved is an amputation”.

It’s an apt metaphor. Not just because of the profound loss, but because of how it changes your life forever — how, though normalcy may return to some extent, the loss is ever-present, shaping how you interact with the world.