400,000 more deaths in the US than normal since the Covid-19 attack

Since March, at least 400,000 Americans have died more than in a normal year, a sign of the widespread devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

An analysis of mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows how the pandemic is bringing with it unusual patterns of mortality, even higher than the official totals of deaths directly related to the virus.

Deaths across the country were 18% higher than normal from March 15, 2020 to December 26, 2020. Our numbers may be underestimated, as recent death statistics are still being updated.

Our analysis examines deaths from all causes – not just confirmed cases of coronavirus – beginning when the virus spread in the United States last spring. This allows for comparisons that do not depend on the accuracy of the cause of death report and includes deaths related to outages caused by the pandemic, as well as the virus itself. Epidemiologists refer to fatalities in the gap between the observed and normal numbers of deaths as “excess deaths”.

Public health researchers use these methods to measure the impact of catastrophic events when official measures of mortality are flawed.

As the Covid-19 cases spread across the country, the geographic patterns of abnormal mortality statistics followed. The excess of deaths has peaked three times so far, as have deaths from Covid-19.

There are now excess deaths in every state, with outbreaks in states like California, Colorado, Kansas and Ohio, increasing the record number of deaths in recent weeks.

Counting deaths takes time and many states are weeks or months late in reporting. These CDC estimates are adjusted based on the delay in mortality data in previous years. It will take several months before all of these numbers are finalized.

During the period of our analysis, the estimated excess deaths were 21% higher than the official coronavirus fatalities count. If that pattern were to continue until January 14, the total death toll would be about 470,000.

For comparison, about 600,000 Americans die from cancer in a normal year. The number of unusual deaths in this period is greater than the typical number of annual deaths from Alzheimer’s, stroke or diabetes.

Measuring excess deaths does not tell us exactly how each person died. Most of the excess deaths in this period are due to the coronavirus itself. But it is also possible that deaths from other causes have also increased, as hospitals in some critical places have become overloaded and people have been afraid to seek care for diseases that normally survive. Some causes of death may be decreasing, as people stay more indoors, drive less and limit contact with other people.

Drug deaths also rose sharply in the first half of 2020, according to preliminary CDC mortality data that runs through June of last year, a trend that began before the coronavirus pandemic arrived.

Methodology

The total numbers of deaths are estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which are based on the death certificates counted by the centers and adjusted to account for typical delays in registering deaths. The numbers of coronavirus deaths are from the New York Times database of state and local health agency and hospital reports. Deaths from Covid-19 include confirmed and probable deaths from the virus.

Our charts show weekly deaths above or below normal. They include weeks in which the CDC estimates the data to be at least 90% complete or the estimated deaths are above the expected number of deaths. As states vary somewhat in their speed in reporting deaths to the federal government, these state charts show trends in mortality over slightly different periods. We did not include weeks when reported deaths were less than 50 percent of the CDC estimate.

Expected deaths were calculated using a simple model based on the weekly number of deaths from all causes from 2015 to 2019, adjusted to take into account trends, such as population changes, over time.

The excessive number of deaths is rounded off.