William Brangham:
While the study is still being examined and debated, a few things are clear.
These deaths occurred more often with men, compared to women, and they hit older people particularly hard, with 82 percent of the deaths among people 60 and older. And according to the WHO, these deaths were not felt equally around the world. Most were concentrated in low-to middle-income nations.
Joining me now is Jonathan Wakefield. He's a biostatistician at the University of Washington, and his modeling work help the WHO produced this report.
Jonathan Wakefield, very good to have you on the "NewsHour."
First off, these numbers are just so jarring. I mean, this is three times the number of people believed to have died during this pandemic than we previously thought. I wonder if you could just reflect on that initially. Were you struck by the disparity here, how many lives we're talking about?
Jonathan Wakefield, University of Washington: Yes, I was. And it's an absolute tragedy.
I was also struck by there was an extra 13 percent more deaths than we expected to see. So that really struck me as a huge number. There's a lot of people who die, like 55, 60 million people die every year, and 13 percent more died during the pandemic. And that's just an incredible number.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7sa7SZ6arn1%2Bjsri%2Fx6isq2ejnby4e9ahpmaqlaW8s8CMn6CnnKNiu6at0aWwZmllYrqquMuipqdllJqutbTSZpisq5%2BYtqLAxJ1ksKGknXqku9Wim2ZpaWLEsL7Lna6inJU%3D