Has anyone published the numbers on death rates in 2019 and 2020? Take everyone who died, remove violence, accident and suicide and then look at the total remaining. That should remove any judgement calls and multiple causes. How much has the death rate gone up?
Even that could be misleading. How many people this year died of treatable conditions just because they didn’t go to the hospital because they were afraid of the virus?
I’m sure nobody knows the answer to that, but I’m also sure it has happened to some degree.
RE: the numbers on death rates in 2019 and 2020? Take everyone who died, remove violence, accident and suicide and then look at the total remaining. That should remove any judgement calls and multiple causes. How much has the death rate gone up?
I have not looked at the numbers, but, here are the possibilities following your methodology ( and since we are only in the Month of May 2020 as of this writing, we have to look at 5 month period from January to May for the years we want to compare):
1) The numbers remain quite similar ( not exactly equal but up or down are different only by a few hundreds or a few thousand)
2) The 2020 numbers are UP significantly
3) The 2020 numbers are DOWN significantly
If we see something like #1 or #3 above, then we can probably conclude that they have OVERCOUNTED Covid-19 deaths.
Only if #2 is true can it tell us that Covid-19 contributed to a significant death toll in the US population.
BTW, this method should be applicable to all other countries that keep good records.