Excess Deaths

Carla: You have a lifetime left. Why waste it missing what's already gone?
Louden Swain: It does seem morbid, doesn't it?
--Vision Quest

These pages have discussed conditions of active agency surrounding public health officials and associated policymakers, including their incentive to 'fudge' data to cover-up errors. It is not surprising, then, that officials are taking increasingly liberal approaches to recording COVID-19 mortality, including backdating deaths and counting anyone even presumed to have the virus upon death as a COVID fatality.

Given that the 'official' COVID numbers are being infected (!) with error at growing rates, it is possible that the most accurate picture of COVID-19 fatalities will come from examining total death counts from all causes (which are much harder to fudge vs cause of death), and taking the difference between actual deaths and the number of fatalities expected from historical patterns to arrive at 'excess deaths' attributable to the coronavirus.

If COVID-19 death counting was 100% accurate, then we would expect to see total deaths surge by the amount of this new, unique morbidity. However, if COVID death counts surge but total fatalities don't surge similarly, then the lack of 'excess' provides more perspective of the true effect of the new disease.

As Ryan McMaken reports, weekly US death counts as of April 4 have yet to show a nationwide surge. He notes that some states, such as New York, did see a significant increase in weekly deaths in early April. However, other states thought to be areas of concern, such as Colorado and Florida, have seen no increase in deaths. In some states, total death counts are down.

Of course, it is possible that deaths from other causes have declined as people are locked down and not socially interacting. On the other hand, suicides and health problems that generally increase when people are out of work and experiencing difficult economic times could serve to push fatalities higher.

What is evident is that, thus far, COVID-19 related deaths have not been sufficient to push nationwide mortality above that significantly exceeds historical levels.