Excess Mortality

The decision as to whether someone is ruled to have died of the coronavirus or other natural causes is sometimes a judgment call. I have discussed before that Belgium records almost as many deaths as Germany does, yet has reported less cases then Germany has. Many people have attributed these differences to how they choose to report cases, with Germany being very strict in their reporting of when some passes away from Coronavirus. Just to give some comparative statistics (as of 722 AM):

Country…..Population….Cases…….Deaths

Germany………83.12…….1,541,775…..27,156

France…………67.15…….2,535,781…..61,019

UK……………..66.80…….2,079,678…..67,718

Italy…………….59.39…….1,964,054…..69,214

Spain…………..47.33…….1,819,249…..49,260

Netherlands…..17.54……….711,540…..10,606

Belgium……….11.55……….626,911…..18,697

Czechia……….10.71………..635,414….10,562

Austria………….8.94………..342,226……5,540

Population is estimates for 2020 and is in the the millions.

So, for example Germany has one death for every 57 reported cases, Belgium has one death for every 34 reported cases, whereas the UK has one death for every 31 reported cases. Of course, this is also influenced by the extent of testing. Measured to total population, Germany has one death for every 3,061 people while Belgium has one death for every 618 people (and UK has one death for every 986 people).

Now the United States (population: 330.85 million) has 18,032,824 reported cases and 319,466 reported deaths. This comes out to one death for every 56 reported cases or one death for every 1,036 people. 

I did notice an article published yesterday by AP about the estimated number of deaths in the United States for 2020: https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-deaths-2020-top-3-223015097.html

Highlights:

1. Around 3.2 million Americans have died of all causes in 2020.
   1. There were 2,854,838 deaths in 2019.
   2. Deaths usually rise by 20,000 to 50,00 each year.
2. Excess deaths for 2020 is around 400,000 more than 2019.
3. These are preliminary figures.
4. This is an increase is total deaths by 15% from 2019 to 2020.
5. The increase from 1917 to 1918 (Spanish Flu) was 46%.

So, it does appear that the U.S. excess death totals are in line with the reported number of cases recorded as died of Coronavirus.