Insights for Navigating an Uncertain World
Mark Skidmore is Professor of Economics at Michigan State University where he holds the Morris Chair in State and Local Government Finance and Policy. His research focuses on topics in public finance, regional economics, and the economics of natural disasters. Mark created the Lighthouse Economics website and blog to share economic research and information relevant for navigating tumultuous times. View more posts
Actuaries are very smart, and facts are facts. They don’t really care if someone dies from the flu or from Covid, as long as the overall numbers are roughly the same. But one thing that is surely freaking out the actuaries at this point is the phenomenon of Covid vaccine-related deaths. Those deaths represent an entirely new category of mortality that has come out of nowhere. It’s highly doubtful that they had the time or data to incorporate deaths to date, plus the ones that are coming, into their rate tables. It will be interesting to see how they handle the claims. Will life insurance companies deny them by saying that, based on the warnings of so many eminent physicians and medical researchers, taking the shot was tantamount to suicide? Suicide is almost always an excluded, disqualifying event in life insurance policies. We can be sure that the debate is going to get frothy, because insurance companies are addicted to money and as a long-standing and consumer-reviled industry tactic look for any and all excuses they can find to deny claims. What a tangled web the orchestrators of this catastrophe have woven.
Great comment. Thanks a lot SD.