Impact The global excess mortality has reached about 30 million lost lives attributable to Covid, and the Global Burden of Disease published a major paper this week in The Lancet on the toll it has taken for reducing life expectancy in 204 countries summarized as "The COVID-19 pandemic caused the most severe drops in life expectancy seen in 50+ years." The study did not address disability among survivors, with multiple concurrent studies reinforcing the prevalence of Long Covid in tens of millions of people.