Excess deaths (to April 11)

[JHB]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/05/02/excess-deaths-during-covid-19/

The United States recorded an estimated 37,100 excess deaths as the novel coronavirus spread across the country in March and the first two weeks of April, nearly 13,500 more than are now attributed to covid-19 for that same period, according to an analysis of federal data conducted for The Washington Post by a research team led by the Yale School of Public Health.

The Yale team’s analysis suggests that the number of excess deaths accelerated as the pandemic took hold. There were 16,600 estimated excess deaths just in the week of April 5 to April 11, compared with 20,500 over the prior five weeks.
***

Those excess deaths — the number beyond what would normally be expected for that time of year — are not necessarily attributable directly to covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. They could include people with unrelated maladies who avoided hospitals for fear of being exposed or who couldn’t get the care they needed from overwhelmed health systems, as well as some number of deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate. The number is affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as traffic fatalities and homicides.

But excess deaths are a starting point for scientists to assess the overall impact of the pandemic.
***

And remember, the end-point for that data was three months ago.

[soothsayer]

1. Woof

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. Thank you for that.

Instead of states and countries reporting confirmed Covid-19 deaths, they should all be reporting excess deaths.

Not all excess deaths will be from this virus, to be sure. People far better at statistics than I am could tease out what the probably true numbers are. Some unknown number of them are for a whole lot of other reasons including, but not limited to, people unable or unwilling to go to hospital or get treatment because so many are sick and in hospital with the virus.