{"id":28161,"date":"2021-05-07T07:08:53","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T07:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/workcarewellness.co.za\/healthwise\/death-in-2020\/"},"modified":"2021-05-07T07:08:53","modified_gmt":"2021-05-07T07:08:53","slug":"death-in-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workcarewellness.co.za\/healthwise\/death-in-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Death in 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"

This sounds rather more like a book or movie title than an article on health & wellness, does it not?! It just seems like a time to offer a bit of perspective and context as we continue to grapple with the Coronavirus pandemic worldwide.<\/p>\n

People do die<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is an inescapable reality that dying is part of living. This is, of course, obvious. We state it here because in these modern times it sometimes seems like we are not willing to accept death. In the last period of time have we not heard things like \u201cno avoidable deaths\u201d,\u00a0 \u201cnobody will be left behind\u201d, and \u201cnobody needs to die\u201d etc?! But people do die. All the time. It will come to each of us.<\/p>\n

We know what kills<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is good data on worldwide mortality. At a big-picture level we can be quite clear on what are the biggest killers on the planet and here are the top 5 killers of adults in 2020:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Condition<\/strong><\/td>\nDeaths in 2019<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Heart disease<\/strong><\/td>\n9m<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Stroke<\/strong><\/td>\n6m<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Emphysema<\/strong><\/td>\n3m<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Respiratory infections<\/strong><\/td>\n3m<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Covid-19 (approximate deaths 2020)<\/strong><\/td>\n3m<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Data is from WHO reports, rounded-off to nearest million. Covid data is not from 2019 but shown for approximate comparison purposes.<\/em><\/p>\n

This data is fascinating and we would highlight two aspects for now:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

    \n
  • If you group heart disease and stroke \u2013 which is logical since the risk factors are very similar for these two cardiovascular conditions \u2013 you can see that cardiovascular disease remains the biggest killer worldwide.<\/li>\n
  • Relatively speaking, and based on early data at this stage, Covid-19 has not killed as many people as we might think, give the way it has disrupted the planet.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    \n

    Death is part of life. Cardiovascular disease remains, by far, the biggest killer worldwide. Lifestyle changes like eating better and moving more can reduce cardiovascular risk greatly. We think you get it\u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,68,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-coronavirus-resource-centre","category-feature-articles"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-25 16:39:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/workcarewellness.co.za\/healthwise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/workcarewellness.co.za\/healthwise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/workcarewellness.co.za\/healthwise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workcarewellness.co.za\/healthwise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workcarewellness.co.za\/healthwise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/workcarewellness.co.za\/healthwise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28164,"href":"https:\/\/workcarewellness.co.za\/healthwise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28161\/revisions\/28164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workcarewellness.co.za\/healthwise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/workcarewellness.co.za\/healthwise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workcarewellness.co.za\/healthwise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workcarewellness.co.za\/healthwise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}