COVID-19 became the third-leading cause of death for Canadians last year, overtaking accidents and unintentional injuries for the first time since the disease emerged in 2020.

New Brunswick saw the biggest decline in life expectancy among provinces, dropping more than a year to 79.8 years from 80.9 in 2021, the report said. Saskatchewan’s life expectancy has fallen the most over the past three years combined, dropping a full two years to 78.5 in 2022 from 80.5 in 2019.

So COVID is killing so many old people that it’s dropping overall life expectancy, and it is worse in the provinces with the lowest vaccination rates.

The death of babies lowers life expectancy a lot more than the death of seniors. Since COVID predominantly kills the elderly, it means that if life expectancy is going down then COVID must still be really mowing seniors down, even though vaccines are available.