Some still argue that Covid-19 is just some kind of flu. That is hasn’t had much of an impact.
Some even argue that the reports of the number of deaths in the United States from Covid-19 are exaggerated. The figures that CDC uses as a provisional count are figures that are in the middle. They are higher than the death certificate reports which trickle in and, therefore are not complete. They are lower than the difference between the number of deaths each month compared to the typical month of, say, the last three years. A substantial portion of that difference should be attributed to Covid-19. The CDC’s figure for May 12 is 80,820 deaths. That’s a lot of people who died as a result. How does that compare with other causes of death.
These are crude calculations. Not scientific. Only roughly accurate. But they are roughly accurate. Here’s the calculation for three months of Covid-19. We know that there were hardly any deaths in January or February of 2020. We want a figure for March, April, and May. Assume that the figure to date is for 75 days instead of the actual 73 (to take into account the few deaths in January and February) and project what the figure would be for 90 days.
Here’s the calculation for three months of the other causes of death in 2017, which is the most recent CDC final figure for a year. Divide by 4 to get one quarter of the year or three months.
Covid – 19. 80,820 calculated for a full three month period – 96,084. Watch at the end of May and see how close that figure is.
Calculated three month Covid-19 number of deaths compared to 2017 causes of death
- Heart disease 161,864
- Cancer 149,777
- Covid-19 96,984
- Accidents 42,484
- Lower Respiratory diseases. 40,050
- Stroke 36,595
- Alzheimer’s 30,351
- Diabetes 29,861
- Influenza and Pneumonia 13,918
- Kidney diseases 12,658
- Suicide 11,793
Don’t let them fool you. The death rate for Covid-19 is high. At least for now. If it remains at this level for the rest of 2020 and the first two months of 2021, Covid-19 will be the third highest cause of death in the country – from March 2020 to February 2021. The number of Covid-19 deaths are going down in the northeast and the west coast. Not in the rest of the country, though. Not in the areas where states are opening up for business prematurely.