How Cumulative Statistics Can Mislead: The Temporal Dynamism of Sex Disparities in COVID-19 Mortality in New York State

• Authors: Ann C Danielsen, Harvard University; Marion Boulicault, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Annika Gompers, Emory University; Tamara Rushovich, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Katharine MN Lee, Tulane University; Sarah S Richardson, Harvard University
• Journal Title: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH
• Volume: Volume 19, Number 21
• Publisher: MDPI | 2022-11-01
• Type of Work: Article | Final Publisher PDF
• Publisher DOI: http://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192114066
• Subjects: Health Sciences, Epidemiology
• Keywords: Science & Technology; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; Environmental Sciences; Public, Environmental & Occupational Health; Environmental Sciences & Ecology; COVID-19; gender; sex disparities

Abstract

Overall, men have died from COVID-19 at slightly higher rates than women. But cumulative estimates of mortality by sex may be misleading. We analyze New York State COVID-19 mortality by sex between March 2020 and August 2021, demonstrating that 72.7% of the total difference in the number of COVID-19 deaths between women and men was accrued in the first seven weeks of the pandemic. Thus, while the initial surge in COVID-19 mortality was characterized by stark sex disparities, this article shows that disparities were greatly attenuated in subsequent phases of the pandemic. Investigating changes over time could help illuminate how contextual factors contributed to the development of apparent sex disparities in COVID-19 outcomes.