The data you're pulling tallies pneumonia/influenza deaths. There are some problems when 2020 is factored in.
I have doubts on how the CDC or health systems are categorizing "flu/pneumonia deaths". Are they lumping all "COVID positive" deaths in there, even the ones where people died of other causes? This categorization is a point for data manipulation, and that's why I think total deaths from all causes shows a better, less potentially skewed picture.
By tallying years only until week 47, this leaves out a large chunk of flu season deaths from previous years. As shown in my graphs, 2020 does not have the same death distribution as any other year. Tallying up to week 47 only will make it seem that previous years were not as bad as they were while looking at the worst part of 2020.
Running the numbers like you and the CDC did, you arrive at 300,000+ excess flu/pneumonia deaths, but looking at all reported deaths so far, there are only about 70,000 more deaths than 2019. This is within previously seen yearly variations. One would think that if the CDC were being "honest" with their analysis, you would not see such an obviously inflated number. How could there be 300,000 more flu deaths when only 70,000 more people total have died in 2020 compared to 2019?
Of course, the rest of 2020's death count needs to come in before saying anything for sure, but it looks like we may come in within historical variation or maybe slightly above it...but nothing like the world ending calamity the MSM has been making it out to be.
I really am interested in your thoughts, as you seem to bother to look at numbers which is nice :)
But yeah, points 1 and 3 are just wrong because the CDC data I used (and thus my numbers above) are TOTAL DEATHS for all causes.
I'm not sure #2 is actually an issue, but I'm happy to re-run the numbers in 2 weeks. I seriously doubt (given the numbers being reported the last couple weeks) that it will narrow the gap at all. If anything I expect it to widen further.
Replied to your other comment, and yeah I mistakenly assumed you were running the flu numbers from that data set. (I blame the CDC's awful data presentation practices.)
Anyway, point 2 is the main issue.
We should both take a look when more numbers come out. My guess is that the gap will narrow. It'll probably be something like 100-150k over 2019. But even if it grows to 300k+ we still have to keep in mind that that represents an excess 0.1% of the total population that died.
I also ran some numbers myself, though much fewer numbers :)
I pulled the last 4 years of weekly raw data from the CDC here: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html
Then I tallied and compared the totals for the first 47 weeks of each year:
2017 2515944
2018 2551868
2019 2559485
2020 2886361
Based on this data, total deaths are indeed up over 300,000 this year vs each of the last 3 years, which were each within 50,000 of one another.
That seems significant to me. What are your thoughts OP?
Cool, so these are my thoughts...
The data you're pulling tallies pneumonia/influenza deaths. There are some problems when 2020 is factored in.
I have doubts on how the CDC or health systems are categorizing "flu/pneumonia deaths". Are they lumping all "COVID positive" deaths in there, even the ones where people died of other causes? This categorization is a point for data manipulation, and that's why I think total deaths from all causes shows a better, less potentially skewed picture.
By tallying years only until week 47, this leaves out a large chunk of flu season deaths from previous years. As shown in my graphs, 2020 does not have the same death distribution as any other year. Tallying up to week 47 only will make it seem that previous years were not as bad as they were while looking at the worst part of 2020.
Running the numbers like you and the CDC did, you arrive at 300,000+ excess flu/pneumonia deaths, but looking at all reported deaths so far, there are only about 70,000 more deaths than 2019. This is within previously seen yearly variations. One would think that if the CDC were being "honest" with their analysis, you would not see such an obviously inflated number. How could there be 300,000 more flu deaths when only 70,000 more people total have died in 2020 compared to 2019?
Of course, the rest of 2020's death count needs to come in before saying anything for sure, but it looks like we may come in within historical variation or maybe slightly above it...but nothing like the world ending calamity the MSM has been making it out to be.
I really am interested in your thoughts, as you seem to bother to look at numbers which is nice :)
But yeah, points 1 and 3 are just wrong because the CDC data I used (and thus my numbers above) are TOTAL DEATHS for all causes.
I'm not sure #2 is actually an issue, but I'm happy to re-run the numbers in 2 weeks. I seriously doubt (given the numbers being reported the last couple weeks) that it will narrow the gap at all. If anything I expect it to widen further.
Replied to your other comment, and yeah I mistakenly assumed you were running the flu numbers from that data set. (I blame the CDC's awful data presentation practices.)
Anyway, point 2 is the main issue.
We should both take a look when more numbers come out. My guess is that the gap will narrow. It'll probably be something like 100-150k over 2019. But even if it grows to 300k+ we still have to keep in mind that that represents an excess 0.1% of the total population that died.