Death Toll From COVID-19 Is Much Higher Than Reported

As I write this post, the number of deaths from COVID-19 stands officially at over 130,000. That's a terrible number, especially considering it didn't have to be that bad.

If the Trump administration hadn't bungled and mishandled their response to the pandemic, and had acted earlier, many of those deaths could have been prevented.

But it gets worse. Now a new study shows that the true death toll from COVID-19 is much higher than has been reported. That's because deaths related to the virus are only reported from most states if tests showed the virus was present in the victim. That means many deaths due to the virus have gone unreported.

Here is how Berkeley Lovelace, Jr. reports the new study at cnbc.com:

The number of confirmed U.S. deaths due to the coronavirus is substantially lower than the true tally, according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Using National Center for Health Statistics data, researchers at Yale University compared the number of excess U.S. deaths from any causes with the reported number of weekly U.S. Covid-19 deaths from March 1 through May 30. The numbers were then compared with deaths from the same period in previous years. 

Researchers found that the excess number of deaths over normal levels also exceeded those attributed to Covid-19, leading them to conclude that many of those fatalities were likely caused by the coronavirus but not confirmed. State reporting discrepancies and a sharp increase in U.S. deaths amid a pandemic suggest the number of Covid-19 fatalities is undercounted, they said.

“Our analyses suggest that the official tally of deaths due to Covid-19 represent a substantial undercount of the true burden,” Dan Weinberger, an epidemiologist at Yale School of Public Health and a lead author of the study, told CNBC. Weinberger said other factors could contribute to the increase in deaths, such as people avoiding emergency treatment for things like heart attacks. However, he doesn’t think that is the main driver.

The study was supported by the National Institute of Health.

The 781,000 total deaths in the United States in the three months through May 30 were about 122,300, or nearly 19% higher, than what would normally be expected, according to the researchers. Of the 122,300 excess deaths, 95,235 were attributed to Covid-19, they said. Most of the rest of the excess deaths, researchers said, were likely related to or directly caused by the coronavirus.

Covid-19 affects nearly every system in the body, including the circulatory system, leading to an uptick in heart attacks and strokes that physicians now believe were indirectly caused by the virus.

The number of excess deaths from any causes were 28% higher than the official tally of U.S. Covid-19 deaths during those months. The researchers noted the increase in excess deaths in many states trailed an increase in outpatient visits from people reporting an “influenza-like illness.”. . .

The researchers noted the gap between the reported coronavirus deaths and the excess deaths varied by states. For example, California reported 4,046 Covid-19 deaths and 6,800 excess deaths, leaving 41% of the excess deaths unattributed to Covid-19 they said.

Texas and Arizona had wider gaps, with roughly 55% and 53%, respectively, of excess deaths unattributed to Covid-19.