Expected and excess deaths in America

As the bureaucrats tally up the wrath of Covid in 2020, there is a strong urge to claim 'excess deaths' resulting from Covid. 'Excess deaths' is a fear-mongering term to justify the large number of deaths attributed to Covid as a cause, rather than as a co-morbidity. Die of a heart attack and test positive for Covid? That's probably a Covid death. Die in a car accident with a subsequent positive Covid test (meaning you might have had Covid and survived it)? You're probably a Covid-caused death. But the underlying issue is the difference between how many deaths were expected in 2020 versus how many there actually were.

So how many Americans died in 2020. One estimate, from USAFacts, claims 3.1 million. A bit disingenuously, they claim it may take another year to get an accurate count, but they have no such qualm in keeping Covid deaths counted with a day or two of death.

Going into 2020, what was the estimate for the number of American deaths in 2020? USAFacts used 2019 as a reference point, a baseline, and claimed deaths were up 12%, and that the mortality rate had been between 8 and 9 deaths per 100,000 over the last ten years. What they did not say is even more interesting. Most important, they did not note that this mortality rate and the American population have both been increasing consistently over those ten years. In fact, the recorded and projected annual mortality rates from 2000 to 2030 look like this:

As to the United States population, America added twenty-five million people in the past ten years. So do the math. Multiply the mortality rate (0.009) by the population (330,066,000) and that number is 2,975,000. And in counting Covid deaths, recall the original Imperial College estimate of American deaths -- 2,000,000 -- of which, the 'experts' later acknowledge, two-thirds of those people were likely to die in 2020 in any case.

The Covid virus is most lethal to the aged, of which there are a lot more in America these days, from the baby boomers born between 1946 and 1956. The federal Administration on Aging 2009 report claimed that the over-65 count would grow from 40 million in 2010 to 55 million in 2020. In that period, the growth of the US population overall was about 10%; for the over-65 group, it has been 37.5%. Or take this deadline from the US Census Bureau: 65 and older population grows rapidly as baby boomers age. With millions more Americans over the age of 65, is it any wonder that there are more people over the age of 65 who are dying?

Changing that mortality rate from 0.0090 to 0.0091 and you now have over 3 million 2020 deaths in America. And that very slightly higher rate is not that unrealistic, given the high vulnerability of the over 80 population to the Covid virus. And the flood of immigrants has also increased the actual number of people living in America.

The fact that the vast majority of 'Covid' deaths -- 95% over the age of 50 -- were among elderly people, especially sick and older, with three or more pre-existing co-morbidities, e.g., diabetes, chronic lung disease, high blood pressure, and that the fact that the mortality rate for those over 80 is about 17%, expect the mortality rate in America to be higher than expected in 2020, but it may also result in a lowering of the rate in subsequent years. As some realistic observers acknowledge, Covid is, in effect 'harvesting' deaths early, or even 'culling the herd' (this idea is almost the opposite of 'herd immunity'), preying on people who were close to death at an advanced age.

The media picked up on a story of several nuns dying outside of Albany, New York. While any 'cluster' of deaths, even in a nursing home, is tragic, the average age of those deceased nuns was over 90. Even absent Covid, that number of deaths in a facility designed for people close to death is not at all surprising. Sad, yes. Tragic, not exactly. I have heard two separate reports of families who asked doctors to not treat very elderly patients who have contracted Covid. In one case, the patient herself made this request. Ivor Cummins in his study of deaths in Sweden showed that over 80% of the first wave of deaths were among patients triaged as being beyond help. People surrender to what they feel or know to be a rapidly approaching death. Modern medicine can only do so much.