A question that is still largely unanswered about the large death toll from the coronavirus is how much have we lost in terms of societal contribution from people with the prime of their careers still ahead of them.

For example, will anybody write a famous song about the young geniuses struck down by COVID the way “American Pie” commemorates the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, age 22, and Ritchie “La Bamba” Valens, then only 17 and on a trajectory to perhaps be the most famous Mexican-American ever.

Here’s the current version of Wikipedia’s

List of deaths due to COVID-19

This is a list of notable people who have died from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), as a result of infection by the virus SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article is about deaths of notable people. …This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

I think their working definition of “notable” is having a Wikipedia page already, although I can’t confirm that. This list appears to be updated about a half dozen times per day, so it’s not abandoned. How complete it is, I don’t know, but it seems complete for the famous cases I can recall.

One of my usual analytical techniques from the bag of tricks I’ve assembled over the decades is to check out my theories against other people’s lists which they assembled for purposes not related to my theory. That way I can’t be accused of cherry-picking my data. (Of course, I still am accused of cherry-picking …)

Below are the 167 more or less American deaths. The table is organized by country of death, so I’m counting everybody who died in the U.S, plus a small number of people whose place of death was not recorded but who are described as Americans. There are a handful of Americans who died abroad whom I am not including because it would have been more work than it was worth.

The lists include live links to the Wikipedia page of the dead person and the Ref. column takes you to a footnote linking you to a news account of the death. So you can read up on the individuals, perhaps find a picture, see what they’ve been doing lately, and do your own analyses.

If you aren’t American, I encourage you to do your own analysis for the country you know best.

Among these 167 deaths, the mean age of death was 78.6 and the median age was 83.0.

These are not, on the whole, hugely famous people. I think I recognized 15 of the 167 names, and I’m reasonably well informed. Many of them were never celebrities but instead high achievers in low profile fields like nephrology or corporate law, or obscure figures in more publicized fields like sports or music.

What strikes me is that only a few of them were struck down in the prime of their careers. Actor Nick Cordero was 41 and working steadily, songwriter Adam Schlesinger was 52 and had recently done excellent work for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Herman Cain was 74 and still doing Herman Cain stuff. But your take on this data may differ from mine:

What do you think?