2020-04-20 | How the lockdown saved lives

In the context of the covid-19 pandemic, Insee made available a detailed file on mortality in France from 2018 to 2020: https://insee.fr/fr/statistiques/fichier/4470857/2020-04-17_detail.zip. It enables to assess the global impact of the pandemic on mortality but also the unintended impact of confinement. [1/n]

Confinement did save lives in an unexpected way. Young people <30 died much less during the confinement period than during the same period last year: [2/n]

319 persons age<30 died instead of 445 had the situation been similar to the two previous years (plus a 2020 trend shown by pre-confinement period). Confinement produced a 28% drop in age<30 death count. [3/n]

Let's dig further. If we restrict to young adults only, the confinement saved 92 lives and led to -41% in number of deaths. [4/n]

Confinement benefited much more males than females. It saved 77 male lives (***) versus 15 female lives (non-significant) [5/n]

It also saved much more masculine lives during weekends (-45 deaths ***) than during mid-week days (-15 deaths non-significant) . [6/n]

Hence, confinement, at least during its early phase, produced a drop in masculine violent over-mortality, presumably mostly in terms of car accidents during the week-ends.
More to understand this:
https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2005/09/RENAHY/12775

[n/n]