I like the idea of tracking excess deaths. Sometimes cause of death is not certain. However excess deaths need not be coronavirus deaths. How about riot deaths? Or deaths due to reduced policing and increased homicides?
You can see that effect you’re speaking of. Excess Deaths in states that had few coronavirus deaths went negative. There were fewer than normal years. Lockdown meant no commutes and fewer highway deaths. So they went negative.
But the Northeast was just a disaster. It was probably the Italian strain that came to NYC and blasted the whole region.
So if you’re county has few deaths, good, but for the first half of this year there is no question the northeast took the national numbers up to ugly levels.
As for during the peak of deaths April timeframe, I compared the number of excess deaths to the official coronavirus deaths, looking for too much attribution in the hospitals and maybe politics.
Nope. The excess and the coronoavirus numbers matched closely. Certainly not exact, but it’s pretty legit.