Numbers, Statistics and Misconceptions

Numbers are confusing to most people.  Few of us are comfortable with statistics and really understand how to interpret them.  Any lingering numerical skills from the painful years of high school math are gleefully jettisoned, and we are easily led astray when confronted with any sort of statistical analysis.

Numbers can also be cynically manipulated or naively misused.  Numbers and statistics are ultimately representations of events, and the meaning behind the numbers must be clear in order to ensure the correct interpretation.

A powerful example of this occurred about six months into the pandemic, when the CDC reported that 94% of COVID deaths had other morbidities associated with the death.  Very quickly large numbers of social media posts and talking heads interpreted that to mean that only 6% of the reported COVID deaths were actually caused by COVID.  This misinterpretation persists even today and there are many Americans who believe the number of COVID deaths is radically overcounted.

But here is the highly probable truth:

First of all, no one really dies solely from COVID.  The virus manifests itself in other pathologies such as pneumonia, respiratory distress or cardiac arrest.  The attending physician will add those pathologies to the death certificate, along with any known factors that may have made them more susceptible – diabetes, obesity, cancer, weakened immunity, etc. – to provide as much information as possible for later analysis.

But how can one know for sure that these people didn’t die from those other problems?  Perhaps the COVID virus was just present, not a contributing factor.  Here is where additional statistical (not anecdotal!) data plays a decisive role – the number of EXCESS DEATHS.

The total number of deaths in the USA is tracked and is predictable to within a small margin of error each year based on historical data.  Thus, the number of excess deaths in 2020 over what would have been expected is a very good estimate for the true number of COVID deaths and is probably more accurate than the confirmed number.  There were 3.38 million deaths in 2020 versus 2.85 million in 2019 (see the graph below and the dramatic step between 2019 and 2020). This would mean that the 2020 COVID deaths are closer to 500k!  The death rate (number of deaths per one thousand people) had an 18% increase in one year, from 8.7 to 10.3.

 Over eight hundred thousand people will have officially died from COVID in the USA by the end of 2021. There were about 380k confirmed COVID deaths in 2020 and there will be at least 450k in 2021.  But when one analyzes the excess death data it is extremely likely that the total number of COVID deaths for the two years will exceed one million!