Are you in the mood for some extraordinarily bleak good news/bad news kind of news? Well, as COVID-19 turns five years old, we get a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research that says the illness has killed so many Americans that it’s provided a temporary increase in Social Security benefits since there aren’t as many people around to receive the money. Grim! Nihilistic, even!The National Bureau of Economic Research estimates that since COVID killed around 1.7 million Americans aged 25 and older between 2020 and 2023, Social Security won’t need to pay out retirement benefits to those people, seeing as they are dead, which increased the Social Security fund by $294 billion.Of course, some of that gain is offset by the reduction in tax revenue ($58 billion) since those people are not alive enough to pay taxes anymore. Also, the government has to pay out survivor benefits to relatives of the deceased ($32 billion), which comes out to around $205 billion net difference.Many of those who died were seniors over 65 who had already been receiving—or were soon to receive—retirement benefits after years of paying into the system. The study also bleakly hints that people dealing with long COVID are likely going to have to drop out of the workforce eventually, which will lead to fewer people paying into Social Security and more people receiving disability payments.The report is not gleefully rejoicing over the fact that the government is going to save money because people are dead. It’s not that bleak. It’s just the result of independent researchers crunching the numbers and proving, once again, that numbers can sometimes be cold and uncaring. Besides, it’s not like a couple hundred billion dollars in savings is all that impressive. Social Security pays out $1.6 trillion in benefits this year. The study’s authors note that a couple hundred billion in savings is “modest” and only covers a couple of months’ worth of payments.The post COVID Killed So Many Americans That Social Security Shot Up $205 Billion appeared first on VICE.