COVID-19 Mortality Update - December 2020

This chart compares the total number of people who have died in the United States from ANY cause for this and the previous six years using data from the CDC. The X-axis is the week of the year. (Week 1 ended January 4, 2020; Week 11 ended March 7, 2020, Week 39 ended September 26). There is no doctoring these numbers as it is all deaths for ALL causes.

Table of Mortalities

My Thoughts

1. COVID-19 is killed 11 to 12 percent MORE people in the flu-season year ended October 2, 2020 than would have otherwise died in an average year. So definitely NOT the flu.

2. According to Worldometer, there have been 307,846 deaths related to COVID-19. Based on the table above, I would say, if anything, this number is slightly understated. However, we could be seeing increased death due to indirect COVID-19 circumstances. I.e., increase suicides, overdoses, etc.

3. The spike in weeks 13-21 was due mostly to the medical profession learning how best to treat the disease. It was a BAD idea to put recovering patients in elder care facilities. It was a BAD idea to intubate based on low O2 levels alone.

4. Although the CDC says that their data is ~100 percent complete, the total number continues to rise by sometimes more than 2 percent from week to week. I would say that this data is very solid through week 40 (week ending October 2).

5. In other words, Weeks 43 and 44 will likely increase by another 2 to 3 percent even though the CDC indicates the data of near 100 percent complete.

6. These numbers do not reflect the recent spike in deaths since that did not really begin until week 45.

7. I have heard from multiple sources that while C-19 related deaths are up, normal death due to the flu are way down. It will be interesting to see if there is another big spike like there was in weeks 13-21 last flue year. No big spike would indicate that while C-19 is worse than the flu, it was nothing compared to the ill-advised treatment and patient policies from late last Spring.