In recent weeks, we’ve been keeping an eye on weekly total deaths as they are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Weekly deaths—as opposed to COVID-19 death totals—provide some needed context. This is important, since we now know that doctors and health administrators are encouraged to be—in the words of Deborah Birx—”liberal” with counting COVID-19 deaths.
This week I’m looking at week 15 (the week ending April 11). The CDC says that week 16 data is “100% complete” but experience suggests that it will still be a week or two before we have 90 percent or so of the total.
Even week 15 will continue to adjust upward, but large adjustments for week 15 are unlikely at this point.
Looking at the data we do have, there were 65,524 total deaths in the US during the week of April 11. That’s up 18 percent (or 10,338 deaths) over the week 15 average (55,186) for 2017–19. Using the average for 2017–19 as the baseline, “excess deaths” number about 10,000 or 0.0031 percent of the US population. Interestingly, no weekly total this year has yet equaled the total mortality for week 2 of 2018, which was a very bad flu year according to the CDC (week 1 is on the left in blue and week 15 is on the right in gray for each year):
Not surprisingly, a large portion of this is coming from New York State. In New York, the week 15 total was 4,156 death, which was 2,129 above the 2017–19 average of 2,027. So, about one-fifth of all excess death in week 15 came from New York. With excess deaths at more than 2,000 for week 15, that means deaths more than doubled the average for that week:
This isn’t surprising, since, as we see here, COVID-19 deaths in New York are many times larger per capita than is the case in the rest of the nation. Indeed, as of late April, New York and New Jersey combined accounted for more COVID-19 deaths than all other US states combined. New York’s excess deaths during week 15 amount to 0.01 percent of the state’s population.
Many other states saw far more modest increases. In Florida, for instance, the data received through May 7 shows that there is still no sign of a New York-like surge for the week of April 11. Total deaths for week 15 of 2020 were 4,214, which was up five percent, or 134 deaths, over the 2017–19 average of 4,010. One hundred thirty-four deaths is 0.00054 percent of the state’s population.
