What Do Suicides, Heart Attacks and COVID-19 Deaths Have in Common?

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19-July-5569.pdf
Published Aug 29, 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.18103/mra.v12i8.5569

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Main Article Content

Keith Gandal
Professor of English and Creative Writing at City College of New York, CUNY. He is a survivor of the 1968 H3N2 Pandemic (better known as the Hong-Kong flu)
Neil Gandal
Professor at the Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University and the School of Cyber Studies at the University of Tulsa. We are grateful to Peter Walker, the Data Viz Co-Lead, at the COVID Tracking Project for help obtaining the Florida data and to Ariel Rubinstein and David Steinberg for helpful comments. Disclosure: The authors are brothers. This is a new version of the paper originally entitled “U.S. COVID-19 Deaths: The Weekend-Effect Mystery”.

Abstract

In this paper, we examine U.S. COVID-19 deaths by day of the week during the first few months of the pandemic. Using data from the two large US. States (Florida and Texas) that report deaths by “day of actual death,” and controlling for time trends, we show that deaths during the Monday to Friday period (the week) were 7-8 percent higher than the weekend (Saturday and Sunday) in these states.


The weekend effect does not obtain in New York City, which also reports deaths by “day of actual death.” We provide some preliminary thoughts as to why this “weekend” effect obtains for COVID-19 deaths in Florida and Texas, but not in New York City.


We then compare the strength of the weekend effect for COVID-19 with suicides and heart attacks since both of these have a social component and exhibit a “day of the week” effect.

Keywords: COVID-19 Deaths, New York City Deaths, Florida Deaths, Texas Deaths, Suicide, Heart Attacks

Article Details

How to Cite
GANDAL, Keith; GANDAL, Neil. What Do Suicides, Heart Attacks and COVID-19 Deaths Have in Common?. Medical Research Archives, [S.l.], v. 12, n. 8, aug. 2024. ISSN 2375-1924. Available at: <https://esmed.org/MRA/mra/article/view/5569>. Date accessed: 06 sep. 2024. doi: https://doi.org/10.18103/mra.v12i8.5569.
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Issue
Vol 12 No 8 (2024): Vol 12 No 8 (2024): August ISSUE, Issue 8, VOl.12
Section
Research Articles

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References

Collart, P., Coppieters, Y., Godin, I., and Levêque (2014), “Day-of-the-week variations in myocardial infarction onset over a 27-year period: the importance of age and other risk factors,” American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 32 (2014) 558-262.

Eunkyong, K., et al., (2019), “Blue Monday Is Real for Suicide: A Case-Control Study of 188,601 Suicides,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 49 (2) April 2019 393.

Fuks, M., Gandal, K, and N Gandal (2024), “The Uneven Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on US Fatal Road Accidents,” Medical Research Archives 12 (2), 2024.

Freemantle, N., Richardson, M., Wood, J., Ray, D., Khosla, Shahian, D., Roche, W., Stephens, I., Keogh, B., and Pagano, D., 2012, “Weekend hospitalization and additional risk of death: An analysis of inpatient data,” J R Soc Med 2012: 105: 74--84. DOI 10.1258/jrsm.2012.120009.

Gandal, N., M. Yonas, M. Feldman, A. Pauzner and A. Tabbach (2023), “Long-Term Care Facilities as a Risk Factor for Death Due to COVID-19,” Medical Research Archives 11 (3), 2023.

Data Sources:
New York City (NYC) daily death data by actual date of death are available from the NYC government site at https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page. These data are by day of actual death; they are continuously updated and are preliminary until confirmed (usually after a week). 2) In the case of Texas, the death data by actual date of death are available at the Texas Department of State and Health Services at: https://dshs.texas.gov/coronavirus/additionaldata.aspx. Courtesy of Peter Walker, Florida death data by actual date of death are available https://usf.app.box.com/s/ru7dxth2hadozcuuksyg5iesuj5lvuz3.