Quote:
Originally Posted by Edward64
I would like to see the # deaths compared year-over-year as in Feb-Mar-Apr-May 2020 compared to 2019. That delta should give us a good approximation of coronavirus related deaths.
|
Those are available on the CDC website as weekly numbers with one caveat: Registration lacks behind (always, not specifically now) so what you see there will be lower than what you see looking at the same tables in a month. Someone a while back made a comparison how the first week in April went from virtually no excess deaths when looking at it mid april to 30+% looking at the same week but doing so in mid may.
Excess Deaths Associated with COVID-19
Seeing 2018 here as well is useful as well, because that was a bad flu season.
Summary of the 2017-2018 Influenza Season | CDC
The CDC data also shows pretty clearly that the flu season this year in the US (as in most of the northern hemisphere) has been below average with no excess mortality. Small favors and all that ...
If you are interested, a similar table is available for a bunch of european countries collected by an EU project since 2015 (scrolling down will let you select individual countries), with the same caveat of the last few weeks not being accurate yet.
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
That comparison shows pretty well btw how the flu truly is seasonal and wanders across the globe and how it hits different countries at different times and sometimes different years depending on factors mentioned above. Also shows how SarsCov2 moved essentially South to North within Europe.
And while obviously people do suffer (and die ! I don't want to minimalize that) from not getting treatment or postponing treatment, either out of fear or (like NY) because they literally can't get it in time due to the health care system crashing and burning, a lot of other causes are still hidden covid causes.
Because covid does cause heart attacks and strokes and organ failure and plainly does get missed as a diagnosis as well or a death may go without a diagnosis at all. (the CDC actually has a category for "unusual illness/symptoms" which was up big time in march and april).
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ew-jersey.html