I have noticed that folks aren't able to conceptualize what the severity level of COVID-19 is. This is leading a number of reactions from, "the world is coming apart," to, "everyone is over blowing this!" After speaking with a number of people, I believe this is because the early comparisons to flu and lack of other metrics in which to compare.
I have decided to put up bi-weekly updates on the COVID-19 death rate, as it compares to other common causes of death in the United States. I decided on the death rate because the reported numbers for infected are extremely unreliable. While there is unreliability in the death counts, it is less so and can be used as a number to apply comparisons to.
This should only be used as a comparison. I recommend following all guidelines from the CDC as well as your state and local officials. Also, please remember this is aggregated data over the entire United States. COVID is hitting different parts of the country at different times so while a high number of people may have died the majority could be in another state.
That said, this is not a perfect analysis. All sourcing is listed below and I invite constructive criticism on how it can be improved.
Types of Analysis
Direct Comparative
The CDC has a listing of reported deaths per week for Flu (source: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html). This allows for a direct week-to-week comparison of the flu at it's peak. The CDC also defines different flu seasons into Low, Moderate, and High. Due to lack of data, for the "Low" category I have to use what appears to be a "Low-Moderate."
Data Sets used:
- Mild-Moderate: 2015-2016 Flu Season
- Moderate: 2018-2019 Flu Season
- High: 2017-2018 Flu Season
Other death data is not as precise to the weekly level as the CDC flu data. Most other types of morbidity data are annual estimates. This means if you take a weekly average you are not picking up variability across the data set.
However, it is still useful to be able to see the average number of Americans who die for various causes per week as compared to COVID-19, if for no other reason for it to give additional context and other metrics to weigh the current response against.
Data Sets used:
- From 2017 CDC data (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/)
- HIV/AIDS
- Firearms
- Suicide
- Pneumonia
- Diabetes
- Heart Disease
- From the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration: (https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812826)
- Car Accidents
- From the National Cancer Institute: (https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html)
- Cancer (all types)
Each time series starts on Friday and ends the following Thursday. The data series starts on 2/28/2020.
Mortality numbers are derived from the information found here: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries
Baseline numbers (without COVID) are:
Note: Averages have a *; Comparative Analysis and Pneumonia are highlighted in blue
Weekly
Annual
Update Schedule
As much as is humanly possible through the life of this crisis, I will update this blog no later than Wednesday's and Saturday's at 6 pm Pacific time. As revised numbers are added, corrections to previous comparisons will be posted.
All collected data as of 3/31/2020 (as of writing) will be posted after this post. Because data for the mid-week period is already included, the next update to this analysis will be 4/4/2020.
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