# US excess deaths in 2020

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-excess-deaths-in-2020/920183>\
**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:** 1\
**Showing post:** 20

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**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")

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> [@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.

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