What’s the Real Story?
Unfortunately, the answer is crystal clear: The Coronavirus Death Toll in the United States is dramatically understated.
A New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows just how many lives are being lost in the pandemic, as some people die from the virus itself and others from the upheaval it has brought.
Nationwide, 200,700 more people have died than usual from March 15 to July 25, according to C.D.C. estimates, which adjust current death records to account for typical reporting lags. That number is 54,000 higher than the official count of coronavirus deaths for that period. Higher-than-normal death rates are now widespread across the country; only Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and West Virginia show numbers that look similar to recent years.
Our analysis examines deaths from all causes — not just confirmed cases of coronavirus — beginning in mid-March when the virus took hold. That allows comparisons that don’t depend on the availability of coronavirus tests in a given place or on the accuracy of cause-of-death reporting.
Best Explanation
Through July 25, estimated excess deaths were about 37 percent higher than the official coronavirus fatality count. If this pattern holds, it would put the current death toll at more than 216,000 people.
Covid is the best explanation for the excess deaths.
Arguably hospitals were so flooded with Covid it impacted other ailments and/or fear of catching Covid caused people to not seek treatment for other diseases resulting in excess deaths.
But what percentage would one want to place on that?
The Real Number Range
If one assigned all excess deaths to Covid, the number would be 54,000. That’s not likely.
I suspect at least 80% of those excess deaths were Covid-related.
That would make it the undercount at least 43,000 (as of July 25) and higher now.
Mish
Why always worse and panic? Does anyone ever look at the positive side here or anywhere? Probably millions more have really had this nonsense fake virus which brings the death rate even lower.
This year is the worst in a lot of ways, and abuse of statistics is one of them. The CDC numbers are estimates but treated like actual physical measurements/counts. We are immune, right? Quick, what’s the error bar on that 200,700 number and how was it computed?
Stick to what you know, which isn’t much, but is enough. Your politics are a shitshow. Your macro is pretty damn good.
If you get the chance to watch this it’s very enlightening. The death toll is obviously very important and disturbing but there’s still a huge amount we don’t know about the toll of the virus on survivors.
Thanks for that link. I actually had to watch in on youtube instead, though. It’s very interesting and entertaining. I didn’t really learn anything new, but I was still glad I watched it.
Pleased you liked it.
For those spouting off about “dropping death counts”….
The USA graph is incorrect. Official data is here:
Nobody is mentioning an increase in suicides as one of factors contributing to the higher overall death rate.
30% unemployment, unpaid bills, pending eviction plus bleak prospects will take a heavy toll psychologically on many.
What no one is also mentioning is that those are a consequence of the virus itself, not the lockdowns. In my state, we never locked down. When cases were high in April-May, business was off 60-70%. When cases dropped, business recovered back to down 20-30%. Now, with cases rising again, it is off 40% and falling. If cases continue to rise, I expect to see us off 70% again.
Lockdown or no, a hit to the economy is going to happen, and it is going to continue until the virus is under control. That’s why the total economic hit will be smaller in countries that got it under control than the hit in countries that didn’t have a unified effort to eliminate it.
What happens when the next virus arrives? Is shutting down the economy for every virus going to become SOP?
They shut it down the last time, in 1918, and this time, so I presume they will shut it down the next time, probably 2122 or so.
The same New York Times author that wrote the article Mish refers to, published an article on July 15th documenting how drug overdoses in the US have resurged to a record. Are those legitimate COVID deaths?
No, but they increase the overall death rate.
My point being that there are increased deaths of “healthy” people being caused by the policy response to the virus.
ARGHH. Correlation <> causation. Sure, it is a logical hypothesis to propose that since deaths are higher than normal since March, and CV hit in March, then the increase in deaths is due to CV. But that is not proof. It could be CV, it could be effects of the lockdown (not seeking other treatments, suicides), it could be space aliens using CV as cover for their nefarious plots. Using overall death rates is a useful and suggestive tool, but to call it ‘case closed’ based on that evidence is irresponsible.
Haven’t you heard? In modern times we skip the scientific method and if A happens at the same time as B, then A causes B (no consideration is given to B causing A or an external factor C causing both A and B).
I blame Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” where he explained that ice cores show CO2 levels corresponded to the earth’s temperature in the pre-industrial age, and therefore CO2 drives the earth’s temperature and not vise-versa. He also explained that, since the earth’s continents once fit together as Pangea, then everyone must accept that correlation is proof of causation and the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis is totally valid and the science is settled. Get with the times, bro! /s
Nobody has questioned influenza deaths, in fact they have been calculated the exact same way for decades…excess deaths get lumped into the flu.
In 2017 the latest final numbers from the CDC , over the 123 days of March 15th to July 25th, about 922,500 people died in the US
More political fear mongering from the confirmed bias at the New York Times.
Can you please explain why you think the ideas in the article are wrong?
It was a rare excellent article by the NYT – flawless IMO
Rafterman attacking the source with no facts
My attack on the source is credible after the recent resignations at the New York Times, the Times scores about the same as Fox News on the Bias-o-Meter in my opinion.
Mish, I guess I’m confused with what is the point your article, is it that the death toll of Covid-19 in the US is higher than reported? That’s quite possible, but you state that it’s “crystal clear” based on estimates from the CDC.
We have both questioned the validity, accuracy of numbers from various government agencies over the years and have seen revisions that are statistical anomalies. So why is this “crystal clear”?
With the astronomical number of data providers inputting the data around the world any reasonable person would admit that any of the Covid-19 numbers be it positives, deaths, recovered… can not be very accurate. So why do I continually see people here using questionable data with large numbers of variables comparing the US to other countries if not for political purposes?
So if your “suspected 80 %” (no facts) 43,000 of the 54,000 under-counted Covid-19 deaths in the US is true what would you recommend we should do going forward? or are you just looking to find a scapegoat?
Would you listen to my argument that we may be over-counting?
The seasonal flu figures of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths is an “overcount”. The number of confirmed cases/deaths from any seasonal flu is a fraction of seasonal flu estimates, including deaths. EVERY epidemic count will be a fraction of confirmed cases the resources (testing, autopsies, medical examiners) don’t exist to confirm every case/hospitalization/death. And so you get a statistical estimation based on historical averages of associated symptoms like pneumonia, organ failure, etc.
If, for Covid-19, the medical system uses the same means to measure and estimate as flu or any other epidemic, then there is no “bias”. And you might say that Covid deaths have been categorized as “probable” and included in counts, but this has also been true for flu deaths, especially in rural areas and in heavy flu seasons. Even a state like NY has a higher number of “excess deaths” than its number of confirmed or even “probable” Covid deaths. That would indicate that liberal governments aren’t being “biased” enough, according to your view.
Covid is real, it is deadly. It is not “just the flu” nor is it the 1918 Spanish Flu. And the entire US political leadership (Democratic and Republican) have failed to contain it or protect working people in the US from its consequences.
Excellent article. It has to be obvious to anyone that thinks about it that if you try to specifically count all people who died of “blank”, whatever blank is, you are going to be low. For most things you are going to be very, very low.
What most people seem oblivious to is that for the flu, the CDC is only able to identify about 5,000 deaths per year as actual flu deaths. They know that count is low, so at the end of the year, they adjust the count by a correction factor. For the flu, the correction factor is usually about five or a bit more, so the turn the 5,000 deaths they actually identified into 25,000.
For Covid, so far they have identified 165,000 deaths. At the end of the flu season, next April, they will look back and estimate the degree of undercounting for Covid, and estimate an adjustment. Based on the data so far, I expect that factor will come out about 1.2-1.3. That would mean that the current death number of 165,000 would end up being 198-214,000.
The normal flu does most of it’s killing in the December-March timeframe, a year after it first emerges. I think Covid will be flatter than that, and rather than having a major December-March peak, it will stay relatively constant all winter. If we continue to see an average of 1200 people a day die until March 31, 2021, that would be another 300,000 people, bringing the counted total to about 465,000. With a correction factor of 1.25, that would be 581,000 deaths, pretty much like the flu. Oh wait, pretty much like the flu times 20.
Yes, the seasonal flu impact (infections, hospitalizations, deaths) is an estimate. “Just-the-flu” advocates seem not to get that those figures actually use the same/similar statistical measures that any past projections of Covid-19 impacts have. Even the 1918 Spanish Flu deaths is estimated at a RANGE of 50-100 million people. Are we to assume that wide range indicates the falsity or overestimation of that deadly pandemic?
Good point.
We will not know until the year is over what the actual increase In mortality is.
No doubt there are many deaths being “pulled forward” by COVID – people who would have died sometime in 2020 anyway – just later in the year.
Lies, Lies and Statistics. We could spend a lot of time here….
The average age of death for Covid 19 is 76. The average American lives to be 79. 200,000 (estimated deaths) times 3 years is 600,000 years lost…a lot of years…
The average US soldier dies at 23. Years lost is 56. On one measure Covid-19 deaths approximate the deaths of 10,000 soldiers. But not exactly the same years…soldiers remaining years are mostly prime of life years, vs Covid 19 are end of life years. Soldiers on average are more healthy than the population their age (and may live longer), whereas Covid-19 fatalities have more comorbidities on average than the population their age (and may live shorter lives).
Not sure what this tells us. But I do wish we would also lose our minds when tracking the deaths of soldiers sent to fight immoral wars.
Speaking of lies, what do we find if instead of making up numbers, we look at an actual actuarial table. Oh, my. The life expectancy of a 76 year old man is 10.53 years, and the life expectancy of a 76 year old female is 12.23 years:
‘Babbling and incoherent’: Internet stunned by Kudlow’s trainwreck appearance on CNN Who’s minding the store?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_UNP138sl4
The ‘excess deaths’ are likely all related to COVID. But many of them involve people with serious non-covid health problems who would have gone into the emergency room to get treatment but didn’t because of covid fears.
If you are interested in the death effects of C19, hit this URL:
Scroll down to a graph showing weekly deaths starting Jan 2017.
By default, the graph shows the whole US. For entertainment, look at the following states:
MA, NY, NJ, NY City, and Connecticut. They essentially change C19 from being a very bad flu year to what it has been. Then look at FL, TX, AZ, CA, and a few others that show the uptick in recent deaths.
I should note: The title on that page is misleading. The graph shows deaths, not C19 deaths. The latter counts are useless. The former, are of interest, though must be calibrated by what is known of mass behavior and its possible effects.
It is a big assumption to say the excess deaths were caused by Covid itself. They could have very easily been caused by the strain put on hospitals and health care which caused a lack of adequate care for other life threatening causes.
One niggle: you say that hospitals were flooded. Some were. But many were laying people off because they were empty, including in States with almost no covid because of the shut-down protocols.
I suspect the number of extra deaths due to the shut-down of normal medical services is far higher than you are guesstimating. Given the high numbers dying in old peoples’ homes in the key death states (NY NJ etc.), arguably bad care was in the mix. Can you imagine how frightening and demoralizing it must have been to be in one of those place, not allowed to see your loved ones whilst facing death. Barbaric – and also contributing to morbidity rates almost for certain.
I for one don’t trust a single number coming out of CDC.
For a different take on what’s going on:
(yes, it’s a plandemic argument, in this case about the World Economic Forum and the pandemic war game exercise conducted in 2018 (?), featuring our own favourite genius and philanthropist and all-round answer to any psychopath currently in the WH threatening our very existence: Bill Gates! Sober analysis of insane goings on in Davos where CDC types are known to tread.)
In sci-fi stories, writers adjust the space distances and durations to suit the plot.
In covid-1984, the people who brought you Obama’s/Hillary’s “pivot to Asia” and Trump’s tariffs and who helped use covid to coverup another financial bust will ensure the case/death count suffices to make enough people hate China.
Covid-19 death counting has been politicized. The statisticians and health experts know their job but politicians are inserting themselves. It will not always be crystal clear but the experts know how to interpret the data.