# How many people have died this year(US or world), and not just from the corona virus **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 28, 2020, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-have-died-this-year-us-or-world-and-not-just-from-the-corona-virus/852736 "2020-04-28T14:44:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-have-died-this-year-us-or-world-and-not-just-from-the-corona-virus/852736/1 "2020-04-28T14:44:03Z")
Is there a website that has this answer? I’d like to see actual numbers - every site I find has projected numbers. (ETA - or just corona virus deaths) ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-have-died-this-year-us-or-world-and-not-just-from-the-corona-virus/852736/2 "2020-04-28T14:58:09Z")
The world mortality rate is something like 7.7 per 1000 people per year. ([Mortality rate - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_rate)) So if you calculate that out, you get something like: (7.8 billion / 1000) \* 7.7 = 60,060,000 people dying per year. According to the CDC, the mortality rate for the US is 863.8/100,000 people, or 2,813,503 people per year, which is a little higher than the world average. > **[FastStats](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm)** > > FastStats is an official application from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and puts access to topic-specific statistics at your fingertips. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-have-died-this-year-us-or-world-and-not-just-from-the-corona-virus/852736/3 "2020-04-28T15:43:22Z")
I see the POW/MIA flag hanging… well, just about everywhere there’s an American flag. And while I appreciate the sentiment, from where I sit the actual number of living Americans currently believed to be held as Prisoners of War couldn’t possibly be more than a few dozen. Is my thinking right on this? Did we get all of our POWs back from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria? \*I tried to Google it, but I got information about not only POWs, but also MIAs, and got numbers in the thousands. Problem is, I’m assuming that the vast majority of MIAs have been dead for years if not decades, and it’s simply a matter of their remains never having been recovered. ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-have-died-this-year-us-or-world-and-not-just-from-the-corona-virus/852736/4 "2020-04-28T16:52:40Z")
What I am looking for is real numbers, not projected or estimated numbers. For instance, this site is for 2017: > **[QuickStats: Average Daily Number of Deaths, by Month — United States,](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6826a5.htm)** > > In 2017, an average of 7,708 deaths occurred each day. January, February, and December were the months with the highest average daily number of deaths (8,478, 8,351, and 8,344, respectively). And it shows a graph of average deaths per day for each month of 2017. But those are based on actual counts. And this site: [COVID-19](https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america) has deaths per day, but only for Corona virus ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-have-died-this-year-us-or-world-and-not-just-from-the-corona-virus/852736/5 "2020-04-28T17:25:10Z")
These might be helpful. > **[Tracking covid-19 excess deaths across countries](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker)** > > In many parts of the world, official death tolls undercount the total number of fatalities > **[Global coronavirus death toll could be 60% higher than reported | Free to read](https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c)** > > Mortality statistics show 122,000 deaths in excess of normal levels across 14 countries analysed by the FT > **[U.S. deaths soared in early weeks of pandemic, far exceeding number...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2020/04/27/covid-19-death-toll-undercounted/?arc404=true)** > > An analysis of federal data for the first time estimates excess deaths -- the number beyond what would normally be expected -- during that period. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-have-died-this-year-us-or-world-and-not-just-from-the-corona-virus/852736/6 "2020-04-28T19:14:54Z")
> [@Zyada](#): > > What I am looking for is real numbers, not projected or estimated numbers. That CDC link I posted has real numbers, including the numbers by different causes of death even. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-have-died-this-year-us-or-world-and-not-just-from-the-corona-virus/852736/7 "2020-04-28T21:05:12Z")
back of the envelope calculation - 8 billion people, assume equally distributed 0-70, life expectancy of 70, then 1/70th of those 8B die each year, or about 114 million. The population is not equal in every age group, it’s not that everyone drops dead exactly at 70, etc. But it’s a good rough estimate. ---
**Author:** ![Wallaby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/dc4da7/32.png) [@Wallaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallaby)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-have-died-this-year-us-or-world-and-not-just-from-the-corona-virus/852736/8 "2020-04-28T21:45:18Z")
[Worldometers](https://www.worldometers.info/) is probably not exactly what the OP is looking for, as it obviously uses forecasting to generate it’s numbers. Very interesting, still (and the COVID-19 numbers are accurate and based on actuals). ---
**Author:** ![Zyada](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zyada/32/3028_2.png) [@Zyada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zyada)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-have-died-this-year-us-or-world-and-not-just-from-the-corona-virus/852736/9 "2020-04-28T22:38:35Z")
> [@bump](#): > > That CDC link I posted has real numbers, including the numbers by different causes of death even. It has numbers for 2017. I don’t see where it has numbers for 2020, and even the 2018 numbers are very high level. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2020, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-people-have-died-this-year-us-or-world-and-not-just-from-the-corona-virus/852736/10 "2020-04-29T12:39:14Z")
> [@Zyada](#): > > It has numbers for 2017. I don’t see where it has numbers for 2020, and even the 2018 numbers are very high level. The US doesn’t have a central registry for births and deaths. Even if someone tried to get an accurate count right now they are at the mercy of what statistics local jurisdictions have made available.