Information on total deaths through March 28 shows no indication of a general surge in deaths in the United States. It’s quite possible we’ll see April’s total mortality begin to show levels well above normal, but the weekly data we have so far show no indication of this.

We now have data up through week 13 (the week ending March 28) for this year, as can be found here. As of April 15, the week 13 data is not yet quite complete, although the CDC lists that data as 93 percent complete.

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The missing data may yet slightly push up these totals, but given that data from hard-hit New York, New Jersey, and Michigan is already accessible for week 13, big increases from the current total are unlikely. After all, week 13’s total would need to increase by 27 percent just to match 2019’s week 13, as can be seen here (week 1 is the column on the left for each year. Week 13 is the column on the right):

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The average for the first thirteen weeks of the year during 2020 is 53,529. That’s below 2019’s average of 57,928, and well below 2018’s average of 60,115. This is not surprising, since the 2017–18 flu season was especially deadly.

For additional context, I have broken out New York State. Here we do finally see a surge in total deaths during week 13.

New York was at clearly elevated levels at the end of March, although total deaths remained below what was reported during week 2 of 2018. But even with this late-month surge, total average deaths for the first thirteen weeks of the year were down in New York when compared to 2017, 2018, and 2019. If we assume New York’s week 13 total points toward its high reported COVID-19 numbers, we will likely see a surge in weeks 14 and 15.

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On the other hand, Colorado, an alleged “emerging area of concern” shows no signs of a surge in total deaths. In fact, week 13 in Colorado was near a multiyear low for total deaths. For the first thirteen weeks of the year, the 2020 average (815 deaths per week) was higher than the 2019 average of 795 per week, and higher than 2018’s average of 801 per week.

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Unless COVID-19 was present in Colorado long before many experts insist is possible, the higher death totals have mostly occurred before COVID-19 had time to spread. The first four weeks of 2020, for example, were already at elevated levels, and the very high total of 865 people recorded during week 8 occurred in late February.

Of course, it is entirely possible that total deaths are pushed down by social distancing practices. With fewer vehicles on the road, there are fewer auto accidents. Diseases other than COVID-19 might be spread less often as well. On the other hand, economic collapse exacerbated by social distancing may be leading to more suicide and stress-related health problems. The extent to which these various factors contribute to overall mortality is unknown, and may never be known. Moreover, the total number of deaths due to COVID-19 is unreliable since deaths are increasingly attributed to COVID-19 even when no test is performed and when other serious medical problems are present. But what does appear evident is that deaths due to COVID-19, at least so far, have not been sufficient to increase total mortality to a level that significantly exceeds what has been seen in the past decade.

Reprinted with permission from Mises.org.

Information on total deaths through March 28 shows no indication of a general surge in deaths in the United States. It’s quite possible we’ll see April’s total mortality begin to show levels well above normal, but the weekly data we have so far show no indication of this.

We now have data up through week 13 (the week ending March 28) for this year, as can be found here. As of April 15, the week 13 data is not yet quite complete, although the CDC lists that data as 93 percent complete.

(bigger)

The missing data may yet slightly push up these totals, but given that data from hard-hit New York, New Jersey, and Michigan is already accessible for week 13, big increases from the current total are unlikely. After all, week 13’s total would need to increase by 27 percent just to match 2019’s week 13, as can be seen here (week 1 is the column on the left for each year. Week 13 is the column on the right):

(bigger)

The average for the first thirteen weeks of the year during 2020 is 53,529. That’s below 2019’s average of 57,928, and well below 2018’s average of 60,115. This is not surprising, since the 2017–18 flu season was especially deadly.

For additional context, I have broken out New York State. Here we do finally see a surge in total deaths during week 13.

New York was at clearly elevated levels at the end of March, although total deaths remained below what was reported during week 2 of 2018. But even with this late-month surge, total average deaths for the first thirteen weeks of the year were down in New York when compared to 2017, 2018, and 2019. If we assume New York’s week 13 total points toward its high reported COVID-19 numbers, we will likely see a surge in weeks 14 and 15.

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On the other hand, Colorado, an alleged “emerging area of concern” shows no signs of a surge in total deaths. In fact, week 13 in Colorado was near a multiyear low for total deaths. For the first thirteen weeks of the year, the 2020 average (815 deaths per week) was higher than the 2019 average of 795 per week, and higher than 2018’s average of 801 per week.

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Unless COVID-19 was present in Colorado long before many experts insist is possible, the higher death totals have mostly occurred before COVID-19 had time to spread. The first four weeks of 2020, for example, were already at elevated levels, and the very high total of 865 people recorded during week 8 occurred in late February.

Of course, it is entirely possible that total deaths are pushed down by social distancing practices. With fewer vehicles on the road, there are fewer auto accidents. Diseases other than COVID-19 might be spread less often as well. On the other hand, economic collapse exacerbated by social distancing may be leading to more suicide and stress-related health problems. The extent to which these various factors contribute to overall mortality is unknown, and may never be known. Moreover, the total number of deaths due to COVID-19 is unreliable since deaths are increasingly attributed to COVID-19 even when no test is performed and when other serious medical problems are present. But what does appear evident is that deaths due to COVID-19, at least so far, have not been sufficient to increase total mortality to a level that significantly exceeds what has been seen in the past decade.

Reprinted with permission from Mises.org.

Mass protests are breaking out across the United States against the tyrannical “stay at home” orders and forced shut-downs of businesses deemed “non-essential.” More than 20 million are suddenly unemployed and they are demanding to know why, with seasonal flu deaths often even higher than those predicted for coronavirus, they are forced into joblessness, poverty, and despair by a political class that faces none of these things. Watch today’s Liberty Report:

From Ohio to Wyoming to Michigan to North Carolina, Americans are increasingly furious over being thrown into house arrest over a coronavirus scare that by all accounts has been wildly overblown. Now they are facing unemployment and worse. With nothing left to lose they are taking to the streets. Meanwhile several US states are teaming up to defy President Trump’s top down approach. Are we in a (political) race to re-open? Watch today’s Liberty Report:

About 2.9 million people die in the United States each year from all causes. Monthly this total ranges from around 220,000 in the summertime to more than 280,000 in winter. 

In recent decades, flu season has often peaked sometime from January to March, and this is a major driver in total deaths. The average daily number of deaths from December through March is over eight thousand.

So far, total death data is too preliminary to know if there has been any significant increase in total deaths as a result of COVID-19, and this is an important metric, because it gives us some insight into whether or not COVID-19 is driving total death numbers well above what would otherwise be expected. 

Indeed, according to some sources, it is not clear that total deaths have increased significantly as a result of COVID-19. In a March 30 article for The Spectator, former UK National Health Service pathologist John Lee noted that the current number of deaths from COVID-19 does not indicate that the UK is experiencing “excess deaths.” Lee writes:

The simplest way to judge whether we have an exceptionally lethal disease is to look at the death rates. Are more people dying than we would expect to die anyway in a given week or month? Statistically, we would expect about 51,000 to die in Britain this month. At the time of writing, 422 deaths are linked to Covid-19—so 0.8 per cent of that expected total. On a global basis, we’d expect 14 million to die over the first three months of the year. The world’s 18,944 coronavirus deaths represent 0.14 per cent of that total. These figures might shoot up but they are, right now, lower than other infectious diseases that we live with (such as flu). Not figures that would, in and of themselves, cause drastic global reactions.

How do these numbers look in the United States? During March of 2020, there were 4,053 COVID-19 deaths according to Worldometer. That is 1.6 percent of total deaths in March 2019 (total data on March 2020 deaths is still too preliminary to offer a comparison). For context, we could note that total deaths increased by about four thousand from March 2018 to March 2019. So for March, the increase in total deaths is about equal to what we already saw as a pre-COVID increase from March 2018 to March 2019.

As Lee notes, total COVID-19 deaths could still increase significantly this season, but even then we must ask what percentage of total deaths warrants an international panic. Is it 5 percent? Ten percent? The question has never been addressed, and so far, a figure of 1 percent of total deaths in some places is being treated as a reason to forcibly shut down the global economy.

Yet, as a CDC report recently noted, pneumonia deaths have often been far more common than COVID-19 deaths are right now: “Based on National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) mortality surveillance data available on March 26, 2020, 8.2 percent of the deaths occurring during the week ending on March 21, 2020 (week 12), were due to [pneumonia and influenza].”

Meanwhile there is a trend t of attributing more of those pneumonia deaths to COVID-19 rather than influenza, although this doesn’t actually mean the total mortality rate has increased. The CDC report continues: “the percent of all deaths with Influenza listed as a cause have decreased (from 1.0% to 0.8%) over this same time period. The increase in pneumonia deaths during this time period are likely associated with COVID-19 rather than influenza.” This doesn’t necessarily represent a total increase in pneumonia deaths, just a change in how they are recorded.

This reflects an increased focus on attributing deaths to COVID-19, as noted by Lee:

In the current climate, anyone with a positive test for Covid-19 will certainly be known to clinical staff looking after them: if any of these patients dies, staff will have to record the Covid-19 designation on the death certificate—contrary to usual practice for most infections of this kind. There is a big difference between Covid-19 causing death, and Covid-19 being found in someone who died of other causes. Making Covid-19 notifiable might give the appearance of it causing increasing numbers of deaths, whether this is true or not. It might appear far more of a killer than flu, simply because of the way deaths are recorded.

Given this rush to maximize the number of deaths attributable to COVID-19, what will April’s data look like? It may be that COVID-19 deaths could then indeed number 10 or 20 percent of all deaths. 

But the question remains: will total deaths increase substantially compared to April 2019 or April 2018? If they don’t, this will call into question whether or not COVID-19 is the engine of mortality that many government bureaucrats insist it is. After all, if April’s mortality remains “about the same” as the usual total and comes in around 230,000–235,000, then obsessive concern over COVID-19 would be justified only if it can be proven April 2020 deaths would have plummeted year-over-year had it not been for COVID-19.

Update:

Meanwhile the CDC is instructing medical staff to report deaths as COVID-19 deaths even when no test has confirmed the presence of the disease. In a Q and A on death certificates published by the CDC on March 24, the agency advises:

COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death. Certifiers should include as much detail as possible based on their knowledge of the case, medical records, laboratory testing, etc. If the decedent had other chronic conditions such as COPD or asthma that may have also contributed, these conditions can be reported in Part II. [emphasis in original.]

This is extremely likely to inflate the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 while pulling down deaths attributed to other influenza-like illnesses and to deaths caused by pneumonia with unspecified origins. This is especially problematic since we know the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 deaths occur in patients that are already suffering from a number of other conditions. In Italy, for example, data shows 99 percent of COVID-19 deaths occurred in patients who had at least one other condition. More than 48 percent had three other conditions. Similar cases in the US are now likely to be routinely reported simply as COVID-19 cases.

Unfortunately, because total death data is not reported immediately, we have yet to see how this plays out. We do know historically, however, that deaths attributed to flu and pneumonia over the past decade have tended to make up around five to ten percent of all deaths, depending on the severity of the “season.” Last week (week 14, the week ending April 4) was the first week during which COVID-19 deaths exceeded flu and pneumonia deaths, coming in at 11 percent of all death for that week. (Using a 2017-2019 average as a baseline.) The prior week, (week 13, the week ending Mar 28) COVID-19 deaths made up 3.3 percent of all deaths. These numbers are likely to rise throughout the month. Yet, until we have reliable numbers on all deaths in the coming weeks, it will be impossible to know the extent to which COVID-19 are “cannibalizing” flu and pneumonia deaths overall. That is, if the COVID-19 totals skyrocket, but total deaths remain relatively stable, than we might guess that many deaths formerly attributed simply to pneumonia, or to flu, are now being labeled as COVID-19 deaths. Potentially, this could also be the case for other patients, such as those with advanced cases of diabetes.

UPDATE, April 8:

White House COVID-19 task for member Dr. Deborah Birx has confirmed it is now standard practice to count all death of persons “with” COVID-19 as deaths caused by COVID-19. At an April 7 briefing, Birx explained:

We’ve taken a very liberal approach to mortality. I think the reporting here has been pretty straightforward over the past five to six weeks. Prior to that, when there wasn’t testing in January, and February, that’s a very different situation and unknown. … [Now] if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.

Here is Dr. Birx saying that the government is recording anyone who dies with coronavirus in the United States, regardless of any other health issue, as a death from coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/p2nIhH4bHP

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) April 7, 2020

Reprinted with permission from Mises.org.

President Trump’s coronavirus point-person Anthony Fauci is taking a beating after his warning of 240,000 Covid-19 deaths even after locking the country down has been revised downward to just 60,000. He’s gone on the network news program in attempt to blame others for his colossal failure, but his CNN appearance over the weekend blaming Trump for not listening to him sooner has provoked a response from the president. Will Trump dump Fauci? Watch today’s Liberty Report:

Anthony Fauci has dominated the headlines for weeks with his doom and gloom predictions of two million Americans dead from Covid-19. If we lock the country down, maybe only 240,000 will die he claimed. But even those numbers collapsed, with the new official prediction coming in under the normal flu numbers for 2018. Was it “social distancing” that saved us? Let’s look at the states and countries that did not lock down – they should have massively higher deaths. Do they? Watch today’s Liberty Report:

Tennessee experienced more suicides last week than coronavirus deaths. Alcohol sales are skyrocketing. The nation seems gripped by fear. What are the unintended consequences of shutting the country down over Covid-19 fears…and how many of these consequences were actually intended? More surveillance? End of habeas corpus? Watch today’s Liberty Report:

Across the country, from political leaders, to small business owners, to parents who just want to take their children to the park, resistance is growing to the authoritarians who have effectively suspended the Constitution and placed most of the country under house arrest. Lawsuits are also challenging unlawful “stay at home” orders. What if all the hysteria-driven orders have actually made the virus outbreak even worse? More scientists are coming forward to argue for the “Sweden model” of moderation rather than lockdown. Watch today’s Liberty Report:

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) became “the most hated man in America” when he dared to demand that Congress actually vote on the biggest bailout of Wall Street in history – the two trillion dollar “coronavirus” bill. What happened behind the scenes and what are the dangers? Rep. Massie tells all in today’s Liberty Report:

In a shocking press conference yesterday, President Trump and his advisors announced that the US military would begin conducting a “counter-narcotics operation” in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean. Perhaps not coincidentally, Trump’s Justice Department indicted Venezuelan president Maduro on drug trafficking charges. Is the US about to “do a Noriega” on Maduro based on half-baked charged that the Venezuelan leader is some kind of drug kingpin? Have the president’s war-braying neocons convinced him that the best thing to get our minds off of coronavirus is a “nice little war”? Today on the Liberty Report:

Yesterday the Mises Institute published a brilliant article titled “End the Shutdown,” making the point that continuing the “house arrest” of Americans and the shutdown of the economy will have much worse consequences than the coronavirus itself. With the infection to fatality ratio at about the rate of the seasonal flu (as per a new Lancet study), is the continued destruction of American economic and social life worth it? Watch today’s Liberty Report: