Weekly Excess Death Rates (perspective)

Post #638

In this prior installment, 312 weeks of weekly death counts in the USA (2014-2019) were used in order to compute the 312 weekly death rates. But for the COVID years, weekly excess death has been much higher than the weekly rates typical of the USA:

The horizontal orange line at 10% weekly excess death approximates the highest-ever weekly excess seen in the 6 years of data on weekly deaths for the USA.

Weekly excess death values got that high only 2 times in 312 weeks, indicating that such excess is rare, because it happens less than 1% of the time (i.e., one week in every 3 full years of observation time).

But the graph above shows two times when weekly excess death exceeded that threshold for 50 straight weeks, and a third time when it exceeded the 10% threshold for 8 straight months during the circulation of a respiratory virus (Omicron) which is even less deadly than the seasonal flu (a similar mortality rate to the common cold).

Reference

[313 typical weeks of all-cause death] — CDC. https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Counts-of-Deaths-by-State-and-Select-Causes/3yf8-kanr

[monthly US population numbers] — U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Population [POPTHM], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/POPTHM