2021 Child Fatality Data | AZ: Guns, COVID, and Neglect
The real data on kids and guns, what it means to die from COVID...and the leading cause of death for children in AZ. It's not what they'd have you believe…read on to learn more. Full report available here.
While DHS stopped publishing its own annual reports, the Child Fatality Review Team - a separate data analysis entity established by statute (ARS 36-3501) and not under the sole authority of DHS - continues to publish data on child mortality. All of it immensely sad, but some of it very...curious.
Snapshot
From 2019-21, mortality rate jumped a startling 6%. No other period reviewed for the prior 10 years had such a jump. 863 deaths in 2021. Cause of death, in descending order: 59% natural causes 28% accidents (cars, drowning) 5% homicides 5% suicides 3% "undetermined"
Surprised its not guns?
That's right - "guns” are not the #1 cause of death for children, and it's not even close. Natural death from a medical condition is: natural causes such as prematurity, congenital anomalies, cancer.
511 out of 863 total = natural deaths
And that rate jumped 9% from 2020-21. What else happened to children during that period? The data analysts know. We’ll get to that later below.
#2 - Accidental Deaths
Accidental deaths is #2 at 29% of all children fatalities, and largely consists of car crashes (70), suffocation (54), drowning (44), and poisoning (42).
#3 - Homicides
47 homicides - intentional deaths, but only 34 of these involved firearms. Accounts for 5% of all child deaths.
Guns were involved in only 34 out of 863 total child deaths in 2021
64% of these involved substance abuse of some form.
But even more alarming is that the homicide rate increased 2X from 2018 to 2020.
What happened in 2019-2020?
Why weren't kids in school during this period? Would it have made a difference? The data review team thought so…I’ll get that.
#4 - Suicides
Suicides also comprised 5% of 863 fatalities, although more there were ten more suicides (44) than homicides (34) - a number that jumped out and pulled the heart from my chest.
And yet, it gets worse.
The child suicide rate also almost doubled from 2018 to 2020, before returning to a more average rate in 2021. The data team’s report emphasizes the 2021 decrease from 2020; why dwell on the dismal numbers of 2020 - especially since it’s still better than the shockingly high male rates of suicide in 2018 (a subject that deserves more public health resources - no one is paying attention to actual, biological boys these days).
2020...2020...2020…what happened in 2020?
About those COVID deaths…
First thing to understand is the curious concept of "indirect" C19 deaths, defined as "a death where the child or caregiver experienced changes or disruptions in how they lived, worked, or accessed services due to" COVID-19.
Look at that explanation again. “Indirect” C19 deaths INCLUDE:
"looking at deaths that occurred DURING SCHOOL CLOSURES when the child may NOT have died IF they were physically in schools"
Public health experts could foresee this. School administrators - maybe not so much. But public health knew. They advocated school closures anyway. And administrators and the teachers unions bought into it lock, stock, and barrel. For their own reasons.
Something else stands out in these “indirect” C19 numbers - something strange.
Without explanation they classify 52% of these "indirect" C19 deaths as either accidents, homicide, natural suicide or "undetermined".
Indirect C19 deaths were 27 in total, 52% of these were in this category. Why?
Somehow, the other 48% of the "indirect" deaths involved substance abuse (see the bottle and pill icon):
Together, the report indicates 58 direct and indirect C19 deaths in 2021, 7% all child deaths.
Direct C19 Deaths - also not what you might think
As if these “indirect” deaths were not strange enough, now look at the definition of “direct” C19 deaths.
For some reason, "direct" C19 deaths include:
Cases diagnosed at autopsy, plus
cases where child "suspected" to have C19, plus
cases where the mother (“birthing parent”) had C19 during pregnancy.
You can draw your own conclusions what this means, if anything. We have never had clarity around COVID numbers - for anything.
Abuse and Neglect
Finally, a note on death by abuse/neglect. Heartbreaking numbers here - anything above zero is heartbreaking - but this spike in abuse death rate for boys is simply...gut wrenching. An increase of over 36% in 2021.
We are everywhere falling apart - not just at the seams, but at the center.
Great analysis. Interesting and sad.