I'm 34, and 4 people from my high school class have already died

Holeee shyt. People die? Wow!

That's enough time to account for druggies ODing and anyone who may have had some terrible disease early in life, and suicide or two.

It's sad for sure. A friend i graduated with and i always comment how we feel our graduating class has had an unusual number of tragic occurrences.

Someone maintains a facebook group for our high school where they report losses from the different graduating class and when i looked one time, you had to go 5 graduating years ahead of mine to have as many losses.. which i found to be strange. However it might not be a statistically significant difference.

It does make you feel lucky and appreciate life more. We need to live to honor those family and friends we have lost. Life can be tough but it can be beautiful as well.

These victims would have been graduating soon.

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My class of about 350 lost many more than that by the time I was 34. So, 18 years after graduation. This is off the top of my head:

One girl died after a tonsillectomy in June after graduation.

2 died of AIDS within 10 years.

Two were killed in different instances during holdups. (They had moved away from my hometown.)

One committed suicide jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge.

One was killed in a motorcycle accident.

Three died in car crashes before we even graduated.

One had a heart attack.

One died from an aneurysm.

At least two more died in car crashes in the years after graduation.

One was killed by the jealous husband of his former wife. Shotgun. In bed.

Can you show the math that shows the expected number of deaths in a group of 200 is 4 between the ages of 18 and 34? Maybe right. Seems a tad high. It's a simple exercise from the data you have provided -- begin with 200 lives and then apply the death rate at age 18 to get the number alive at age 19 then repeat 15 more times to age 34

Three people in my high school graduating class died in our senior year. Another died a year or two later so my class was at four even before I was 21. One more died in the ten years after graduation. After that I completely lost touch with anyone from that class. I assume another one or two were gone by my mid thirties.

This sort of thing is not at all unheard of but it's still surprising because no one really expects to die that young. But the nuns at my grade school always told us that just because we were nine didn't automatically mean we'd all get to be ten.

at least 16 from my high school class of 220 have passed away and it's only been 18 years since I graduated.

Not a lot of people from my high school went to college, most did drugs and didn't prioritize school.

10 have died from drug overdoses, 1 from cancer, 1 got murdered, 1 with cancer, 1 with a heart attack, and 2 from car accidents

10 out of 220 from drug overdoses?? I'm not doubting you, but that seems like a lot, although I suppose in areas where the opioid epidemic is severe that may be the norm. Where was your high school?

Heck you’re still alive right?

Get livin’ your life buddy, with no hesitating about it

15 in my class of 300 by 38. A poorer school than the OP’s by the sound of it.

Mixed bag of causes: accidents, cancer, suicide, police, lifestyle.

Discussion about continued excess mortality. Most recent data (January 2024) shows 6.2% higher than expected.

"Look at these numbers for two years. There is excess above the baseline, These were periods when we were seeing deaths that were higher than we expected. This is monthly data. In December 2020, it was 41% higher than it was supposed to be. September 2021 was a weird month for that, as it was 39% higher than it was supposed to be. But luckily in 2022, it declined. But you're still in this 10%, 12%, 11%, 14% in December 2022. These are big numbers, these are very stable. Recently, in 2023, it's been more like 6%. The data's not mature yet for the more recent months, but in January 2024, so far it's 6.2%. Just to complete the story, you look back at 2019, and these numbers were basically zero, somewhere above zero, somewhere below 2018’s."

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By 34:

* car accident (2)

* suicide (2)

* overdose (1)

Two grades ahead of me, there were these two guys, Steve and Tony, that died one year apart in eerily similar fashion on the same road.

Steve got into a fatal vehicle collision. But Tony was walking home early one morning (in daylight) after drinking at a friends place and he was hit from behind by an elderly driver.

I'm 37, class of 2004. Around 125-150 people in my class, maybe? Rural south.

1 male murdered. This actually happened while we were still students, so not a "graduate." Still, the facts are wild and gruesome, he was shot by a psychotically insane relative, and it kinda counts in its way.

1 male just dropped dead of unknown causes.

1 female suffered an aneurysm at the top of a staircase. Allegedly the aneurysm itself could have been survivable but the tumble down the stairs did her in.

1 female probably should be dead, she was severely burned in an accident and was given a single-digit chance to live, but miraculously survived and seems to be doing as well as possible.

Other wildness that doesn't quite fit the call of the question:

Our senior year one of our classmates' siblings was one of the victims in a double murder-suicide.

Another classmate's sibling committed suicide in prison.

A classmate is doing 25 years for attempted murder.

Other classes slightly above and below mine have also seen some wild demises, including a wrong-way car wreck on the Interstate. Two girls I rode the school bus with, one a grade above and another who if memory serves was 2 or 3 grades below me, were murdered by their abusive boyfriends.

So OP, I think your numbers are probably not abnormal. Most people make it to their mid/late 30's but a single-digit percentage dying then or earlier is probably just about what you'd expect.

Why would you want to go like this?

A guy I worked with was snowmobiling with his 10 year old son, the boy was on his own sled and hit a tree, the father did everything he could to help him until the ambulance showed up but it was too late. Sad story I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy. No surprise it wrecked the Dad's life.

I also got 4 in 200 in the post just before him using the Statisa page that someone linked.

Death rate from 15 to 24 is 121.9 for males and 44.8 for females. Average of that is (121.9+44.8)/2=83.35 people dying per 100,000 people. Divide by 100,000 and the rate is 0.00083 (0.083 percent). Multiply that by 200 people in the class, and you get 0.1667 deaths per year each for age 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24. So up to age 24, multiply by 6 years. You expect 0.1667x6=1.0002 deaths.

For ages 25 through 34, you use the same procedure using the stats for that age group: (221.1+95.7)/2=158.4 deaths per 100,000 for men and women combined. 158.4/100,000=0.001584 is the rate. Multiply that by 200 in the class=0.3168 deaths per year. 25 through 34 is 10 years. 10x0.3168=3.168 deaths

Add 1.0002+3.168 and round down to 3 significant digits=4.17 deaths expected in a class of 200 by age 34.

According to the formula from this page, 4 dead should be expected after 16 years out of a high school class of 200, assuming an equal number of males and females.

This is from 2014. While new projections may be slightly higher to account for the small increase in death rates among young adults, I doubt that increase is statistically significant for the sample size of an average 2008 high school graduating class.

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64 yo. Grad class had 200. 15 males and 6 females that I know of have died. Two actually died before grad in auto or farm accidents. Four died during covid years; one of which had lupus. At least two died of suicide. One died in college of AIDS. Another died of a heart attack in his 30s. At least three died of cancer, one of whom was a lifelong smoker.