CDC:
Based on death certificate data, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 (PIC) decreased from 9.0% during week 25 to 5.9% during week 26, representing the tenth week of a declining percentage of deaths due to PIC. The percentage is currently at the epidemic threshold but will likely change as more death certificates are processed, particularly for recent weeks.
We are not out of the woods yet, but the much claimed "disaster is coming, lock everything down to defeat Trump" is becoming less plausible. Increased testing and no limits on protesting likely are causing increased infection rates, but largely among younger people, who are at low levels of risk from death.
Deaths from pneumonia and influenza occur in a fairly narrow range and are cyclical throughout the year. A couple of months ago I saw were the those deaths had fallen drastically below the usual trend at the same time Wuhan virus deaths spiked implying that many flue and pneumonia deaths were being classified as Wuhan virus deaths. If you know where to get relative death trends like that, I'd like to know.
ReplyDeleteThere are several explanations for lower COVID19 deaths, but as cases rise again, so will deaths - just probably at a lower percentage.
ReplyDeleteFor one thing, it takes 3 or more weeks from infection to death, so the massive surge has not yet resulted in the deaths that will result.
AZ, at least, has more cases among the relatively young. But.... we are now seeing a lot of them in the hospital, which is not a good sign.