Well, I have been following data from various countries, more so back when one of our FReepers was posting exhaustive data, but definitely even less so the past couple weeks (really got busy over / after Christmas.) And, sure, there are many considerations: For example, traffic deaths are down in all the states near me. Suicides and overdose deaths are up. I’m sure fatalities due to “shutdown” and restrictions disruptions of other medical care are up.
It’s perhaps not a major factor, but my family just experienced one of those disruptions. Last week my Mom had to go by ambulance to the hospital in her town due to GI bleeding. (Long story itself, not COVID related.) 160+ bed hospital. The ER stabilized her, but, due to COVID-19, everything unique to GI treatment (including personnel) has been moved to another very similar hospital: It is about an hour to the north by ambulance. 2nd hospital is not even part of the same health care group. Plus, no visitors allowed. So, there are three negatives / risks right there: No GI specialists at “Mom’s” regular hospital, as there usually would be, the trip, and, no visitors. (My Mom took that last very hard. Luckily, for this situation only, @ present I was able to call her 4-5 times a day and got several other relatives and friends involved. So, that helped. Not all patients would be so lucky, and obviously mental outlook is very important.)
Anecdotally, my wife and I are members of churches in two different communities (long story), her church is about 75 miles from mine, her community fairly conservative in a conservative state, my church is in a fairly liberal college town in a very liberal state. Both churches lean toward a little older demographic than the general population, which may (may) explain why total fatalities in both congregations were about double in 2020 what they were in 2019. It COULD just be bad luck, but the congregations (esp. hers) are large enough that is not LIKELY the case, barring something like a very bad church van crash or similar. (None such has occurred.)
In any event, when all the counting is done (by 2022?) I expect a jump of 300k minimum deaths from all causes from 2019 to 2020. 400k would not surprise me as an upper bound.
so sorry about your mom’s troubles, i will say a prayer. my mom is doing well because i made a conscious decision to keep her in her own house and for us the family to be caregivers by going to her.
again, made my decisions months back during the summer about what this covid19 really is and does, as i said, again, cause of death is an art and subject to all kinds of errors and falsification, in the best of times.
i have relied more on my medical schools’ numbers (which break things down by demographic, age, etc.) than the cdc’s and even those i supplement and check. one thing i did was look at excess deaths per month and broken down by region and demographic, comparing to our area directly. that helped me get a better local picture. remember, this is also a very local disease. and i’ve found that, aggregate numbers are misleading on their face. LA and NYC are very different places from N. Dakota and Wyoming.
when all is said and done, i expect that the excess count of people who died from covid19 as a major factor will be far more in certain demographics and locales (e.g., nursing homes/elderly in group homes, inner-city, illegal immigrants, certain ethnic groups, etc) than last year, and that in other demographics (e.g., young adult, kids, etc.) will be less. it’ll will certainly be far less than 300K when the final analyses are done, imo, if serious people are allowed to look, years from now. that’s the other thing, we’re way to close to this right now to get good official analysis. politics and media are muddying the waters tremendously to create fear, of course.
overall, i expect that the total excess deaths for this year will be in the noise of the last say 100 years of data.
anyway, thanks for your comment. may God have mercy on all of us.