Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
You may have heard that Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Infectious Diseases, has “No Doubt” that actual toll is much higher than the reported 581,000 American deaths. He agreed with a University of Washington analysis making estimates of “over 900,000” deaths already with a million U.S. deaths possible before we are through this health crisis. Globally, the numbers are even more horrific.
The IHME data suggests the ratio of total COVID-19 deaths to reported COVID-19 deaths (March 2020 to April 2021) is about 1.6 to 4.1 times what has been reported:
Predicted ratios of total COVID-19 deaths to reported COVID-19 deaths
That is the bad news (and it is mostly backwards looking)
The good news is nearly all of the data is trending in the right direction: Mortality, infections, hospitalizations are all heading lower; Children ages 12-15 are approved for the Pfizer Vaccine. And, most of this positive news is forward looking.
There are still some concerns: Vaccine hesitancy, mutations/variants, and other potential snags are out there.
Still, you have to like that CDC chart above — the red circle shows the excess deaths over 13 months from March 2020 forward. But as the vaccines rolled out, that trend reversed. For the first time since the pandemic ramped up, we are now running below average predicted mortality rates int he United States.
Hopefully, this is pointing to a much better Summer in 2021 than we had in 2020.
