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

Ann Caroline Danielsen; Marion Boulicault; Annika Gompers; Tamara Rushovich; Katharine M N Lee; Sarah S Richardson

doi:10.3390/ijerph192114066

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

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Oct 28;19(21):14066. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192114066.

Authors

Ann Caroline Danielsen¹, Marion Boulicault^{2

3}, Annika Gompers⁴, Tamara Rushovich⁵, Katharine M N Lee⁶, Sarah S Richardson^{7

8}

Affiliations

¹ Harvard GenderSci Lab, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
² College of Computing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
³ Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
⁴ Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA.
⁵ Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
⁶ Department of Anthropology, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA.
⁷ Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
⁸ Committee on Degrees in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.

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.

Keywords: COVID-19; gender; sex disparities.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

COVID-19* / epidemiology
Female
Humans
Male
New York / epidemiology
Pandemics

Grants and funding

T32CA190194 (MPI: Colditz/James)/NH/NIH HHS/United States