LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- More than a million people have died from COVID across the country, and at the same time, cities like Louisville have seen an increase in the amount of people killed by gun violence.
As a trauma surgeon, Dr. Keith Miller knows all too well what it's like to have to comfort someone who just lost a family member to gun violence. Over the past decade, more than 6,000 people have injured by gunfire in Louisville.
"What we're talking about is an endemic problem in our community," Miller said.
UofL Hospital surgeons studied the data and compared it to the response of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We've talked about the fatigue, the misery, the mental health issues that come along with the COVID pandemic and healthcare systems and the public dealing with that on a very prolonged period of time," Miller said. "And I think in many trauma centers across the country that's been true of gun violence for a very long time as well."
The data they found is now published in the Journal Surgery.
In 2020, 10,000 years of potential life was lost to gun violence in Louisville, while 5,000 years of potential life due to COVID.
"That's not to say that any year of life is any more important than any other, or that any life is any more important than any other," Miller said. "The objective of this study was to say that these two public health issues have impacted our community in a substantial way."
Over the past decade — every year leading up to the pandemic — Louisville residents have lost 5,000 years of potential life, which is the same or more lost during the pandemic. The majority of those lives lost are young people.
"Being a surgery resident, someone in training at a younger age, we're seeing that these victims of gun violence are people around our age," Dr. Will Risinger, a UofL surgery resident who also published the study, said.
Both surgeons were not surprised by the data, but hope that others will hear it, and take action to stop gun violence.
"We've seen a lot of response to COVID and that's significantly impacted all of us, but it's also led to better control of COVID," Risinger said. "I try and think about where we were two or three years ago and life was a whole lot different, and I think with that amount of resource and that amount of community involvement, hopefully we can make some sort of similar dent in gun violence that we see in the community."
Copyright 2022 WDRB Media. All Rights Reserved.
