3 ms·

3.2 million (the number from the article) is is 400k more than last year. The latest Covid toll in the NYT tracker is 322,839, and all of those deaths were in

3.2 million (the number from the article) is is 400k more than last year. The latest Covid toll in the NYT tracker is 322,839, and all of those deaths were in 2020. So, there is a gap of 77-78k. Obviously there could be some conceivable increase in other kinds of death for unrelated reasons, but not that much.

will_pseudonym 6y ago
That also would be reflecting a significant (assumed-- possibly non-existent--see twblalock's reply below) reduction in the number of car crash fatalities we'd normally have if lockdowns weren't going on (There were 38,800 total in the US in 2019 [0]). But data seems to be showing increased deaths due to overdoses & suicides due to those lockdowns, so it's hard to tell. > Synthetic opioids (primarily illicitly manufactured fentanyl) appear to be the primary driver of the increases in overdose deaths, increasing 38.4 percent from the 12-month period leading up to June 2019 compared with the 12-month period leading up to May 2020. [1] > Compared to the last three years (2017-2019), the number of suicide deaths was lower than average during the initial phase of the pandemic but, starting in July 2020, exceeded the past trend. The source of the increase was mainly female suicides, whose numbers increased by approximately 70% in October 2020. Suicides by young women (less than 40 years of age) almost doubled in October, with a 95.58% increase, compared to the same month in the past three years. The number of suicides among students was also notably higher in August and September 2020 than the corresponding numbers of past years. Our survey data indicated that the status of mental health among young women has been deteriorating in recent months, and also that young female workers were more likely than any other group to have experienced a job or income loss, suggesting adverse economic conditions surrounding some of these individuals. [2] [0] https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/fatality-estimates https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/fatality-estim... [1] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p1218-overdose-deaths-covid-19.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p1218-overdose-death... [2] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2020/12/05/2020.10.06.20207530.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2020/12/05/202...
- twblalock 6y ago
  We don't have full car crash fatality numbers for 2020 yet, but during the first 6 months of the year, which is when the strictest lockdowns were in effect, deaths were actually up 1% compared to 2019: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/preliminary-estimates/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/prelimina... You can also see monthly estimates here from the same source: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/preliminary-monthly-estimates/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/prelimina.... Overall, 2020 is not stacking up to be a better year for car accident deaths than 2019 was -- certainly not enough to make a big difference in the total number of deaths per year in the US.
  - will_pseudonym 6y ago
    Interesting! That is really surprising to me. I would guess then that the increased traffic from people ordering online instead of in person offsets the increase in driving to work/socializing etc.
    - abduhl 6y ago
      Risk of fatality in an accident is proportional to speed of the vehicles involved. People driving to work are stuck in traffic pre-COVID while the roads are ripe for hitting 80 mph during lockdowns and WFH.
      - will_pseudonym 6y ago
        That makes so much sense! Thank you for explaining, abduhl!
  - causehealth101 6y ago
    One interesting, but unsettling statistic: the RATE of deaths per miles driven has increased by nearly 25% in 2020. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a34240145/2019-2020-traffic-deaths-coronavirus/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a34240145/2019-2020-traffi... "When you factor in an important aspect of that change, vehicle miles traveled (VMT), you actually see that more people died this year, on average, than last year. That's because VMT was down a dramatic 16.6 percent (or 264.2 billion miles) in the first six months of 2020, which pushed up the fatality rate per 100 million VMT, a metric the NHTSA uses to more accurately compare vehicle and road safety over time. Using this number, the NHTSA discovered that fatalities per 100 million VMT climbed to 1.25 in 2020, up from the 1.06 in 2019, despite the same three-year decrease that the agency saw with fatalities-per-VMT that it did with overall fatalities leading into this year."
tinalumfoil 6y ago
If you want to know if the impact of COVID you could look at a metric like excess mortality which there's pretty good data on, then compare the excess to the total mortality. Usually it's calculated so that any excess deaths is pretty rare which is what makes it a good metric. With year on year increase in deaths I'm not sure I could convince myself it was significant unless I had a chart and a calculator in front of me. A year over year death increase, even a large one, seems like it would occur pretty often. Even a large increase in the increase doesn't sound like it would be significant -- wouldn't that be pretty sensitive to the shape of the population relative to age? And I'm not sure what that looks like off the top of my head. There's a lot to adjust for, and you need to be sure you're not just rolling dice at the end with the numbers. My point is it's not really a good metric. There's plenty of reasons why it would jump around, and I'm not smart enough to adjust for all the necessary variables in my head. It's not obvious how much we should expect it to jump around. But maybe others here just know their US demographic data better than me.
- brlewis 6y ago
  We can expect the per-capita death rate to jump around by at most 1.2%, based on data since 1950. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/death-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/deat...
jobigoud 6y ago
> So, there is a gap of 77-78k. The parent was asking about the normal increase of death count year over year. This can explains about half of that gap.

will_pseudonym 6y ago

That also would be reflecting a significant (assumed-- possibly non-existent--see twblalock's reply below) reduction in the number of car crash fatalities we'd normally have if lockdowns weren't going on (There were 38,800 total in the US in 2019 [0]). But data seems to be showing increased deaths due to overdoses & suicides due to those lockdowns, so it's hard to tell. > Synthetic opioids (primarily illicitly manufactured fentanyl) appear to be the primary driver of the increases in overdose deaths, increasing 38.4 percent from the 12-month period leading up to June 2019 compared with the 12-month period leading up to May 2020. [1] > Compared to the last three years (2017-2019), the number of suicide deaths was lower than average during the initial phase of the pandemic but, starting in July 2020, exceeded the past trend. The source of the increase was mainly female suicides, whose numbers increased by approximately 70% in October 2020. Suicides by young women (less than 40 years of age) almost doubled in October, with a 95.58% increase, compared to the same month in the past three years. The number of suicides among students was also notably higher in August and September 2020 than the corresponding numbers of past years. Our survey data indicated that the status of mental health among young women has been deteriorating in recent months, and also that young female workers were more likely than any other group to have experienced a job or income loss, suggesting adverse economic conditions surrounding some of these individuals. [2] [0] https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/fatality-estimates https://www.nsc.org/road-safety/safety-topics/fatality-estim... [1] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p1218-overdose-deaths-covid-19.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p1218-overdose-death... [2] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2020/12/05/2020.10.06.20207530.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2020/12/05/202...

twblalock 6y ago
We don't have full car crash fatality numbers for 2020 yet, but during the first 6 months of the year, which is when the strictest lockdowns were in effect, deaths were actually up 1% compared to 2019: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/preliminary-estimates/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/prelimina... You can also see monthly estimates here from the same source: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/preliminary-monthly-estimates/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/prelimina.... Overall, 2020 is not stacking up to be a better year for car accident deaths than 2019 was -- certainly not enough to make a big difference in the total number of deaths per year in the US.
- will_pseudonym 6y ago
  Interesting! That is really surprising to me. I would guess then that the increased traffic from people ordering online instead of in person offsets the increase in driving to work/socializing etc.
  - abduhl 6y ago
    Risk of fatality in an accident is proportional to speed of the vehicles involved. People driving to work are stuck in traffic pre-COVID while the roads are ripe for hitting 80 mph during lockdowns and WFH.
    - will_pseudonym 6y ago
      That makes so much sense! Thank you for explaining, abduhl!
- causehealth101 6y ago
  One interesting, but unsettling statistic: the RATE of deaths per miles driven has increased by nearly 25% in 2020. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a34240145/2019-2020-traffic-deaths-coronavirus/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a34240145/2019-2020-traffi... "When you factor in an important aspect of that change, vehicle miles traveled (VMT), you actually see that more people died this year, on average, than last year. That's because VMT was down a dramatic 16.6 percent (or 264.2 billion miles) in the first six months of 2020, which pushed up the fatality rate per 100 million VMT, a metric the NHTSA uses to more accurately compare vehicle and road safety over time. Using this number, the NHTSA discovered that fatalities per 100 million VMT climbed to 1.25 in 2020, up from the 1.06 in 2019, despite the same three-year decrease that the agency saw with fatalities-per-VMT that it did with overall fatalities leading into this year."

tinalumfoil 6y ago

If you want to know if the impact of COVID you could look at a metric like excess mortality which there's pretty good data on, then compare the excess to the total mortality. Usually it's calculated so that any excess deaths is pretty rare which is what makes it a good metric. With year on year increase in deaths I'm not sure I could convince myself it was significant unless I had a chart and a calculator in front of me. A year over year death increase, even a large one, seems like it would occur pretty often. Even a large increase in the increase doesn't sound like it would be significant -- wouldn't that be pretty sensitive to the shape of the population relative to age? And I'm not sure what that looks like off the top of my head. There's a lot to adjust for, and you need to be sure you're not just rolling dice at the end with the numbers. My point is it's not really a good metric. There's plenty of reasons why it would jump around, and I'm not smart enough to adjust for all the necessary variables in my head. It's not obvious how much we should expect it to jump around. But maybe others here just know their US demographic data better than me.

brlewis 6y ago
We can expect the per-capita death rate to jump around by at most 1.2%, based on data since 1950. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/death-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/deat...

jobigoud 6y ago

> So, there is a gap of 77-78k. The parent was asking about the normal increase of death count year over year. This can explains about half of that gap.