For Active Military, Suicide Deaths Vastly Outweigh COVID Deaths

Tracy Davenport

News

22nd July 2021

For Active Military, Suicide Deaths Vastly Outweigh COVID Deaths

Many believe that the pandemic led to increased suicide rates (Getty Images).

The Claim

The U.S. military has had more deaths by suicide than by COVID-19.

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Lucas Tomlinson

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Emerging story

A social media user posted that the U.S. Defense Secretary said the most urgent challenge the U.S. military faces is the coronavirus.

A supporting image within the article body

In response, some said that there were far more deaths by suicide last year than deaths by COVID-19. One user received over 136,000 likes on his post.

Misbar’s Analysis

The original post refers to a press briefing on May 6, 2021, when U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said: "Today, the most urgent challenge that we face is COVID-19, and so the department has stepped up to save American lives through vaccination."

In response to Secretary Austin’s remarks, some compared the rate of COVID-19 deaths in the military to deaths by suicide, claiming that suicide caused many more deaths.

Misbar's investigation found that as of March 2021, there were 24 COVID-19 deaths recorded among active military personnel (approximately a year’s time since the beginning of the pandemic). Suicide is the second leading cause of death in the U.S. military. According to Military.com, there were 571 deaths by suicide in 2020. Another way to frame the statistic is that an active soldier is more than 2000% more likely to die of suicide than COVID-19 in the military.

However, COVID-19 is known to disproportionately affect older adults, and the maximum age for any active military member is currently 35 (39 for some Reserve members).

Taking veterans into account, there were nearly 11,000 COVID-19 deaths over the past year. There were around 7,000 veteran deaths by suicide during this time. Many attribute an increased suicide rate to the pandemic.

Since the claim is true when it comes to active military members but false when it comes to veterans, we rate this claim as selective.