This Is Deadliest Disease In America

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 20, 10:52AM EDT

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The list of diseases that kill Americans has been upended. In 2019, no one died from a COVID-19 infection. Since March 2020 (or perhaps a month earlier), the virus has killed almost one million people in the U.S. Additionally, medical experts believe that even if the spread of the virus is brought partially under control, it could kill over 100,000 people a year. That is almost double the number of Americans who die each year from influenza and pneumonia.

COVID-19 even had an effect on the age to which Americans live. In 2020, the life expectancy of the U.S. population was 77 years, according to the CDC. That was down from 78.8 million the year before. The numbers based on gender were very different. “For males, life expectancy decreased 2.1 years from 76.3 in 2019 to 74.2 in 2020. For females, life expectancy decreased 1.5 years from 81.4 in 2019 to 79.9 in 2020.”

Nine of the 10 largest causes of death were the same year to year. COVID-19 was the exception. When the numbers are issued for 2021, this is likely to be the same.

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A look at the diseases that kill the largest number of Americans shows that many are preventable, or at least do not have to affect people at a relatively young. Stoke, heart disease, some cancers, and diabetes certainly qualify. Doctors point out habits that make these more likely causes of death. Smoking, drinking, and obesity are on the list. Nevertheless, while fewer and fewer Americans smoke, more and more are obese. The diet of many people in the U.S. is not what experts consider “balanced”. People consume too much fat and too many carbohydrates.

Another notable thing about American health is that, despite the fact that medical costs per capita are higher in the U.S. than in any other country in the world, residents of several nations live longer. People in nations, particularly Japan, live years longer than Americans.

The No.1 cause of death in America in 2020 was heart disease which killed 696,962 people. It was followed by cancer at 602,350, and COVID-19 at 350,831.

Click here to read How COVID Fatality Rates Compare With Other Deadly Diseases

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.