The death rate is up by 40 percent from pre-pandemic levels according to Scott Davison, chief executive of OneAmerica, a major insurance company based in Indianapolis. During an online news conference on Dec. 30, 2021, Davison said the change was unprecedented.

“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business,” he said.

OneAmerica sells life insurance to employers nationwide, and similar figures are found throughout the industry.

“The data is consistent across every player in that business,” Davison said. “And what we saw just in the third quarter—we’re seeing it continue into the fourth quarter—is that death rates are up 40 percent over what they were pre-pandemic. Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be a 10 percent increase over pre-pandemic. So 40 percent is just unheard of.”

This 40 percent figure doesn’t represent folks dying of old age, but is instead a reflection of deaths in working-age adults, aged 18 to 65. However, what’s responsible for the alarming spike in fatalities in this age group isn’t clear.

With all of the concern about COVID-19 lately, the contagion seems a likely choice. But according to Davison, something else is at play. He said the data coming from insurance companies—entities in the business of paying out when people die—show that the deaths being reported as COVID-19 fatalities “greatly understate” the actual deaths from working age people hit by the pandemic, as most of the claims being filed aren’t being classified as COVID-19 deaths.

“It may not all be COVID on their death certificate, but deaths are up just huge, huge numbers,” he said.

Also taking part in the news conference was Brian Tabor, president of the Indiana Hospital Association. He also noted a dramatic rise in illness from a different perspective. Tabor said hospitals across Indiana were being flooded with patients “with many different conditions.”

In October 2021, The Times of India reported that health insurers saw a “huge surge in non-COVID claims,” with the head of interventional cardiology at a Mumbai, India, hospital noting a 40 percent increase in heart problems compared to the previous six to eight months.

Ever since COVID-19 hit, the world has been bracing itself for huge numbers. Most recently in a White House press briefing on Dec. 17, 2021, President Brain-Dead Biden warned that unvaccinated Americans can look forward to a “winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.”

Still, such astronomical figures emerging all of a sudden are hard to fathom. The pandemic has worn on for nearly two years, and health officials have been keeping a close eye on the death count. What could account for such a dramatic jump at the end of 2021?

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Americans have been dying at a significantly higher rate over the past two years or so, but the COVID-19 disease tells only part of the story. Among seniors, the pandemic could explain the increase in mortality more easily than among younger people, where there’s a gap requiring further explanation.

Overall, there appear to be three distinct patterns in the data based on age:

Among those of age 0 to 17, mortality remained virtually unchanged since 2019.

Among those who were 65 or older, mortality increased in 2020, dropped in the first half of 2021, coinciding with the proliferation of the COVID-19 vaccines, and then increased in the third quarter of 2021, coinciding with the emergence of the Delta variant, which appeared more resistant to the vaccines.