# US excess deaths in 2020 **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [September 9, 2020, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183 "2020-09-09T17:20:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![TGWATY](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b5e925/32.png) [@TGWATY](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TGWATY)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2020, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/1 "2020-09-09T17:20:29Z")
I’ve seen coronavirus death totals so far of numbers from 189,000 to somewhere over 200,000. The 189,000 is the only one whose source I remember for sure. It was CNN article quoting Johns Hopkins. I think the 200,000+ number was one I heard on NPR but I’m not sure. For comparison, the CDC keeps weekly tabs on total deaths from _all_ causes here [https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/data/NCHSData28.csv](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/data/NCHSData28.csv?fbclid=IwAR0O4eaMk7iyAYpKO7RWEPm_6myYr7L394UmwVVWcEeyziOpD_1RkQaWU4g) The last three data points should be ignored because it takes three weeks or so for all the numbers to come in. So comparing the first 25 weeks of 2020 to the first 25 weeks of 2019, we see 138,191 more deaths in 2020. But 2019 was a slow year for death. If we compare to the first 25 weeks of 2018, we get only 124,958 more deaths in 2020. Either of these is a lot of people. But the true effect of the coronavirus can’t be significantly more than these numbers. Can it? ---
**Author:** ![tofor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tofor/32/13727_2.png) [@tofor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tofor)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2020, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/2 "2020-09-09T17:24:56Z")
A few confounding factors I can think of: - Very sick people who would have died anyway died of Covid a little bit sooner, but would have been counted anyway - Millions of people stayed home, so traffic deaths are down, as well as other potentially deadly diseases I don’t know if these factors are sufficient to explain the discrepancy you’re seeing, but are undoubtedly significant. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2020, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/3 "2020-09-09T18:19:53Z")
I’m not a statistician or a epidemiologist, but I imagine deaths from other causes are way down, for example – traffic and other transportation deaths; flu and other communicable disease deaths; stress-related deaths (this could go either way, I guess – my stress levels are way down). According to [this](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html), as of August 22, there were over 200,000 excess deaths worldwide, which they claim is the COVID undercount. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2020, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/4 "2020-09-09T18:24:50Z")
FWIW the best figuring of excess mortality may take years to figure out. But of course some number of the vulnerable medically fragile individuals who died of COVID-19 were at risk of dying of another trigger in the following six months. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2020, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/5 "2020-09-09T19:34:06Z")
> [@TGWATY](#): > > The last three data points should be ignored because it takes three weeks or so for all the numbers to come in. It takes longer than that. Compare, for example, the weekly tab from [two months ago](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/data/NCHSData20.csv) to the most recent. Between week 20 and week 28, they added another nearly 12,000 deaths to the first quarter (weeks 1 to 13), including another 448 way back in week 2. I would be very leery of comparing numbers for at least three months and preferably six, because (especially this year) death certificate preparation can take longer than you think. In my state, for example, funeral directors are the ones who submit the death certificate to the state health department, and delayed funerals and backlogs mean they are slower even than usual. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2020, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/6 "2020-09-09T23:18:09Z")
Two things… 1. It’s clear from the csv you linked to that the most recent weeks do not contain the final numbers, but it is not clear how far back we have to go to have reasonably final numbers. Is week 25 complete? Week 24? We can’t say for sure. 2. Even if we make the assumption that the data is complete through week 25, week 25 ended on June 21 in 2020 but we’re through 36 weeks of 2020 right now. There were about 125k COVID deaths on that date depending on your data source through 25 weeks. Meanwhile the 2020 cumulative death outpaced the the average of the cumulative deaths from 2014 to 2019 by over 179k over the first 25 weeks. There’s a discrepancy, and it goes in the opposite direction of what was stated in the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/7 "2020-09-10T00:05:26Z")
Here’s a dataviz. There’s a discrepancy of about 50k deaths through 25 weeks, and that’s 50k deaths under-reported. [2 new items by K S ![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/9DJYKW9R2Yn3gZW-7RrjmzJJSjj9FJ2IxiMou16QvKJBuwfvbfl-dGm9-7h_-Jk81jGC9zAQPE5DwTrVIn5FDkY90VvoJ_-lV15vkvutoNWeYA2euYhZ0rLvCF-3k6g_iBV-ghy9MQ=w553-h284-p-k "2 new items by K S") ](https://photos.app.goo.gl/4svyb2xAZVd9yUyH6) ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/8 "2020-09-10T04:42:48Z")
Let me be sure I understand you. The claim here is that about 50K people died in the first 25 weeks of the year but don’t show up yet in any publicly available database? That would seem unusual, in this year where we’re seeing data like we’ve never seen before, all the way down to number of tests performed daily county by county. It’s a pretty big claim. What percent of total deaths, from all causes, are we talking about? I’m also trying to imagine how heavy an overload there must be to cause delays of weeks or months in processing death certificates. Like, a surge of 40 percent I could understand. But a surge of ten percent in workload – I wouldn’t think that would stress the systems too terribly. Unless it’s just common, in any year, for deaths to take a long time to be processed? I’d buy that as an explanation, as opposed to the workload just being too high this year thanks to covid, but I’d still expect an effort to be made to hurry things along this particular year, given the profound public health implications of measures that are driven (or not, as the case may be) by this kind of data. It would seem both highly negligent and also intentionally foolish to deploy such incredible resources to running hundreds of thousands of PCR tests a day yet being willfully blind to exactly how many citizens are dying. ---
**Author:** ![eschrodinger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschrodinger/32/122_2.png) [@eschrodinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschrodinger)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/9 "2020-09-10T04:54:46Z")
2018 is a bad year to compare. The 2017-18 flu season was exceptionally bad. > [@](#): > > An estimated 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications [in the winter of 2017-18] — the disease’s highest death toll in at least four decades. > **[CDC: 80,000 people died of flu last winter in U.S., highest death toll in 40...](https://www.statnews.com/2018/09/26/cdc-us-flu-deaths-winter/)** > > The U.S. government estimates that 80,000 Americans died of flu and its complications last winter — the disease's highest death toll in at least four decades. So you are comparing to a year that already had a high excess. These numbers aren’t straight comparisons because they track flu by season rather than calendar year. But a typical season lately is between 12k and 56k deaths in the US. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/10 "2020-09-10T05:15:54Z")
> [@SayTwo](#): > > Let me be sure I understand you. The claim here is that about 50K people died in the first 25 weeks of the year but don’t show up yet in any publicly available database? It is directly from the data set from the CDC linked in the OP of this thread. It could not be more publicly available. Let me break it down: 1. Through the first 25 weeks of 2020 there are 179k more deaths from all causes than the average of the first 25 weeks of the previous six years. That’s from the data linked in the OP. 2. Through the first 25 weeks of 2020 there were about 125k COVID deaths. Source: [United States COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/) 3. The difference between those two numbers is 54k. Let me know if you’re having difficulty with anything else. ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/11 "2020-09-10T05:42:28Z")
You said there were ~50K ‘under-reported’ deaths, and you said the data were, or may have been, incomplete. What did you mean by ‘under-reported’? And what did you mean by ‘incomplete’? ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/12 "2020-09-10T05:46:39Z")
Oh, nevermind, I think I get what you are saying. You are suggesting that all those other deaths were actually from covid. I’m guessing they were ‘reported’ as something, though, so I still wonder what it is specifically you mean by ‘under-reported’. Maybe you mean misreported? You’re talking about a ‘discrepancy’, meaning columns don’t match. I’m assuming those deaths that are publicly reported have indeed been placed in some sort of column. ---
**Author:** ![eschrodinger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschrodinger/32/122_2.png) [@eschrodinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschrodinger)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/13 "2020-09-10T06:05:07Z")
Lots of people have reported that a relative who they know died of Covid-19 was listed as dying from pneumonia, or other causes. Others have reported loved ones dying after experiencing symptoms of Covid-19, but not ever being tested, and having the cause of death listed as a stroke, heart failure, etc., which might have been the immediate cause, but was precipitated by Covid-19. I mean, they were finding people dead in their apartments in NYC at many times the usual rate back at the start, way before there were enough tests. Also, it wasn’t until a ways in that they began recognizing how much it was causing blood clots, and damage to organs other than the lungs. Probably a lot of deaths were misattributed. Some places have reported pressure to not attribute deaths to Covid-19. ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/14 "2020-09-10T06:23:45Z")
So, here’s some quick arithmetic on the data in the CSV file from the OP. Two columns here, the first with week number and the second with 2019/2020 deaths compared to the average from that same week over the past six years (as Lance\_Turbo has done above). | Week | Excess | | --- | --- | | 40 | 1955 | | 41 | 2772 | | 42 | 3678 | | 43 | 3174 | | 44 | 2431 | | 45 | 4150 | | 46 | 3357 | | 47 | 3756 | | 48 | 2411 | | 49 | 3198 | | 50 | 2984 | | 51 | 1746 | | 52 | 2036 | | 1 | 758 | | 2 | 561 | | 3 | 536 | | 4 | 916 | | 5 | 918 | | 6 | 1704 | | 7 | 1219 | | 8 | 2010 | | 9 | 2538 | | 10 | 2393 | | 11 | 2312 | | 12 | 3567 | | 13 | 8193 | | 14 | 17487 | | 15 | 24573 | | 16 | 23343 | | 17 | 20778 | | 18 | 16037 | | 19 | 13880 | | 20 | 12080 | | 21 | 8768 | | 22 | 6433 | | 23 | 4503 | | 24 | 2856 | I looked at the weeks going back to 40 of 2019 to see if there were some sort of ‘baseline excess death’ we should take into account. There does appear to be, as you may be able to see from the data. The last 13 weeks of 2019 ran an excess of 2896 deaths a week, on average, compared to the average of the prior six years. The first 12 weeks of 2020, before things start to really take off in week 13, run an excess of 1619 deaths a week, on average, compared to the average of the prior six years. It follows, then, that in the six months or so before the deaths really took off in week 13 of 2020, Americans had been dying at an average of 2283 more per week than they had over the past six years. There does seem to be some sort of baseline of excess death, using this methodology, that we should account for. In weeks 13 through 24 of 2020 – again, assuming week 24 is ‘complete’, as Lance\_Turbo has mentioned – the US ran an excess of about 13,244 deaths a week, compared to the average of the prior six years. That’s 158,931 deaths in total. If you use 2283 per week as a sort of baseline that you’d be expecting to start from, you see a surge of about 131,500 deaths, or about 11,000 a week. Not sure how that would compare to Covid-19 (‘under-reported’ or not) during that same window of time. I am not, of course, claiming that any of this necessarily reflects reality. But it’s the way I’d approach that data table. ---
**Author:** ![eschrodinger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschrodinger/32/122_2.png) [@eschrodinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschrodinger)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/15 "2020-09-10T07:10:51Z")
There’s no reason to think that your “baseline excess” would have continued past normal flu season, which I would bet is a primary cause. ---
**Author:** ![eschrodinger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschrodinger/32/122_2.png) [@eschrodinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschrodinger)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/16 "2020-09-10T07:20:10Z")
It looks like 2019-20 was probably a moderate to fairly bad flu year, but who knows if we will ever know for sure exactly what the split was during flu season. We can be pretty sure that it hasn’t been causing a lot of deaths all summer, though. Out of curiosity, what do you think could be the cause of some other large quantity of excess deaths. By the way, baseline excess deaths is a bit of an oxymoron. ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/17 "2020-09-10T07:42:43Z")
> [@eschrodinger](#): > > By the way, baseline excess deaths is a bit of an oxymoron. Fair, to be sure, but only in the same way that ‘excess’ ever is. I mean, ‘excess’ above what? If what you are comparing something to always gives you an excess, then maybe it’s not an excess after all. Here’s the full table, with every entry comparing the reported (or ‘under-reported’, as the case may be) numbers from 2019/2020 with the same weeks from prior years. The last column compares 2019/2020 to the average across those years. Not too many negative numbers here, and a whole lot of four-digit ones. | Week | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | Average | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 40 | 5072 | 3213 | 1614 | 1164 | 457 | 207 | 1955 | | 41 | 5786 | 3866 | 3260 | 966 | 1513 | 1241 | 2772 | | 42 | 6734 | 5292 | 3669 | 2900 | 2114 | 1357 | 3678 | | 43 | 6302 | 5101 | 3664 | 2184 | 1505 | 285 | 3174 | | 44 | 5309 | 3134 | 2928 | 2345 | 419 | 448 | 2431 | | 45 | 6760 | 5338 | 5031 | 3175 | 2459 | 2138 | 4150 | | 46 | 6477 | 3417 | 4499 | 2444 | 2119 | 1188 | 3357 | | 47 | 6606 | 4435 | 5001 | 3069 | 2077 | 1350 | 3756 | | 48 | 6177 | 2738 | 3469 | 969 | 705 | 405 | 2411 | | 49 | 6489 | 3747 | 3745 | 2168 | 1706 | 1334 | 3198 | | 50 | 5810 | 3036 | 5816 | 1681 | 288 | 1271 | 2984 | | 51 | 4876 | 1396 | 4663 | 728 | -2081 | 896 | 1746 | | 52 | 6501 | -887 | 5965 | 842 | -2635 | 2429 | 2036 | | 1 | 6647 | -1813 | 4136 | 161 | -6210 | 1625 | 758 | | 2 | 4795 | -726 | 4890 | -565 | -7080 | 2053 | 561 | | 3 | 4381 | 333 | 3779 | -332 | -5686 | 741 | 536 | | 4 | 4447 | 1263 | 2926 | 485 | -4248 | 624 | 916 | | 5 | 4245 | 916 | 3304 | -231 | -2774 | 48 | 918 | | 6 | 5572 | 2549 | 3863 | -69 | -2141 | 448 | 1704 | | 7 | 4438 | 1905 | 2468 | -226 | -1526 | 253 | 1219 | | 8 | 5579 | 2553 | 3348 | -67 | 428 | 216 | 2010 | | 9 | 6731 | 2673 | 2530 | 1149 | 1713 | 433 | 2538 | | 10 | 6428 | 3214 | 2374 | 1009 | 1393 | -61 | 2393 | | 11 | 5764 | 3284 | 3084 | 890 | 1220 | -371 | 2312 | | 12 | 7047 | 5194 | 3770 | 1387 | 2666 | 1337 | 3567 | | 13 | 11509 | 9358 | 8487 | 6664 | 7449 | 5692 | 8193 | | 14 | 20832 | 18885 | 17515 | 16421 | 16287 | 14982 | 17487 | | 15 | 27782 | 25470 | 24824 | 23453 | 23086 | 22822 | 24573 | | 16 | 26285 | 24413 | 22872 | 22951 | 21983 | 21553 | 23343 | | 17 | 23184 | 21465 | 21904 | 19636 | 19204 | 19275 | 20778 | | 18 | 18598 | 16529 | 16918 | 15531 | 14447 | 14201 | 16037 | | 19 | 15152 | 14801 | 14473 | 13488 | 13368 | 11995 | 13880 | | 20 | 14883 | 13487 | 12345 | 10334 | 12196 | 9236 | 12080 | | 21 | 10904 | 9784 | 9012 | 8530 | 8573 | 5807 | 8768 | | 22 | 8594 | 7716 | 7046 | 5501 | 5712 | 4030 | 6433 | | 23 | 7416 | 5415 | 5249 | 3748 | 3165 | 2025 | 4503 | | 24 | 5402 | 4008 | 3207 | 2320 | 1730 | 471 | 2856 | ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/18 "2020-09-10T07:53:17Z")
> [@eschrodinger](#): > > Out of curiosity, what do you think could be the cause of some other large quantity of excess deaths. Oh, I see no reason to doubt that the great bulk of the ‘true’ excess deaths (if that’s something we could ever really know, with a crystal ball to tell us exactly how many people are supposed to die in a given year) are from the disease. I do have concerns about the stories I hear from other countries, not so much the US, about missing half a year, essentially, of things like cancer treatment or whatever else might have helped to forestall death from non-Covid causes in vulnerable people, but I wouldn’t have the faintest guess how many such deaths there might be. And I don’t even want to entertain speculation (of my own) about what effects there might be from lives saved from reduced accidents or taken by drug abuse or whatever. All that seems a bridge too far in any armchair analysis. ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/19 "2020-09-10T08:47:05Z")
> [@eschrodinger](#): > > There’s no reason to think that your “baseline excess” would have continued past normal flu season, which I would bet is a primary cause. Thinking this through a little more, I guess I didn’t fully grasp what you meant at first. I guess you meant that the better way of looking at it is that those weeks spanning week 40 of 2019 to week 12 of 2020 were just especially bad already, even before Covid. Yeah, I guess I get that. Though, six months running is a long time for anything like a flu surge, wouldn’t you think? If you were asking what else might have caused those weeks to be especially deadly, in light of the six years before them, I wouldn’t have a clue. I’m a little intrigued, though, by the idea that Covid may have been circulating for a little while before we figured out what was going on. Seems absurd, though, to attribute such large, and relatively unusual, numbers to that even so. You’d have to think we’d have figured it out earlier, if that had been the case. I suppose things might look a little different if we were looking at per capita rather than raw numbers, but I can’t imagine things have changed quite that much over so short a time. I’d also think to look at counting methodologies potentially changing, but we’re talking about raw deaths, right? Hard to imagine we’re simply ‘finding’ more of those than we used to. I dunno. ---
**Author:** ![DMC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dmc/32/18049_2.png) [@DMC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMC)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2020, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183/20 "2020-09-10T08:47:46Z")
> [@eschrodinger](#): > > It looks like 2019-20 was probably a moderate to fairly bad flu year, but who knows if we will ever know for sure exactly what the split was during flu season. Not when limited to the first 27 weeks of the year according to the NCHS data that was referenced in the OP. Lance\_Turbo has already done yeoman’s work to show that the excess deaths are actually higher than deaths currently attributed to the coronavirus, and I’m pretty sure most of these excess deaths are probably COVID-Related, but attributed to Pneumonia instead. I see no reason in the data to believe that the flu has anything to do with the excess deaths we’re seeing so far. [https://public.tableau.com/profile/dmc7541#!/vizhome/ExcessDeaths\_15997268767130/NCHSData2020throughweek27only](https://public.tableau.com/profile/dmc7541#!/vizhome/ExcessDeaths_15997268767130/NCHSData2020throughweek27only) Note the crazy excess of pneumonia deaths for 2020? Pneumonia deaths are pretty stable and if you exclude the outlier year of 2020 there is a standard deviation of only 3,945. When you add in 2020, the number jumps up to 16,631, over four fold. For shits and grins, drag the slider so the range is weeks 1 through 12 (before the shit really started to hit the fan) and you’ll see that 2020 looks like any other year, both from a total and pneumonia related death standpoint. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183.md?page=2)