Researchers discover psychosocial component to COVID-19 pandemic deaths

Keith Gandal, professor of English in the Division of Humanities and the Arts at The City College of New York, and his brother Neil Gandal, professor of economics at Tel Aviv University, examined U.S. COVID-19 deaths by day of the week during the first several months of the pandemic, from March to August 2020.

Using data from the two largest U.S. states that reported fatalities by day of actual death from the beginning of the pandemic, they show that daily deaths in Florida and Texas during the week were 7% to 8% higher than daily deaths on the weekend in those states. Even in hospitals, the weekend is a more relaxed time.

Meanwhile, a weekend decrease in daily COVID fatalities did not occur in New York City (which also reported fatalities by day of actual death), where during this period the pandemic was each and every day treated as an emergency and hospitals did not have lighter, “weekend” staffing on Saturdays and Sundays.

In essence, the Gandal brothers show that pandemic COVID deaths, like heart attacks and heart-attack fatalities, have a psychosocial component. Their article “What Do Suicides, Heart Attacks and COVID-19 Deaths Have in Common?” is published in Medical Research Archives.

“While doctors are familiar with the fact that heart attacks and coronary deaths occur less during the weekend, they are not familiar with our new and similar findings about pandemic COVID deaths,” said Keith Gandal.

Doctors have given the name “broken-heart syndrome” or stress cardiomyopathy to heart attacks that occur in response to a sudden acute stress, such as the death of a loved one. And the Gandal brothers would suggest that something analogous was going on during the pandemic with what might be called “stress COVID fatalities.”

For example, if COVID patients during the pandemic became suddenly stressed about their illness because of a new lockdown policy or a report on rising fatalities, they might end up experiencing more severe symptoms or even dying.

“I hope this will give our health officials pause,” said Keith Gandal. “Our findings imply that managing a pandemic through the promotion of fear is dangerous.”