The US Has Suffered One Million Excess Deaths Due to Covid-19

CDC said that there had been more than 1m excess deaths in the US during the pandemic. The deaths are mainly attributable to Covid-19 and conditions that may have resulted from delayed medical care and overwhelmed health systems.

According to the CDC, at least 923,000 Americans have died from confirmed Covid-19 cases. Other causes of death above the normally expected number have included heart disease, hypertension, and Alzheimer’s disease. Some Americans also die months after their initial Covid-19 diagnosis because the virus created other fatal complications.

Excess deaths are calculated by looking at previous years’ fatalities. In 2019, there were 2.8m deaths in the US; in 2020, it was approximately 3.3m.  While the cause of death can sometimes be challenging to ascertain, and political pressures can lead to miscounting, excess deaths can indicate the broad scope of a health emergency.Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician, said that whenever we hear that another 100,000 people died of, there’s a reliable chorus of naysayers who claim that these deaths would’ve happened anyway. Excess deaths cut through that because it’s about reporting whether the total number of deaths is out of the ordinary.

These figures can reveal the truer toll of Covid-19 – including deaths directly from infection as well as deaths from the circumstances of the crisis. The global number of excess deaths may be millions higher than the official count of deaths. Many Americans delayed seeking care during the pandemic, and others may have seen the quality of their care decrease as health systems were overburdened by Covid-19. The US is also in the midst of an overdose crisis, with more than 100,000 overdose deaths in the first year of the pandemic.