The true death toll

A commenter asks why people don't count death certificates to determine the actual number of deaths above the norm, since we can't trust the reported Covid-19 deaths. Well, people have done this, and it's pretty disturbing. Researchers who did this in Italy found the actual number of excess deaths to be twice the reported rate. In New York and New Jersey, the excess is at least 50%. This can happen because many deaths are not attributed to Covid-19, whether because they are attributed to influenza or pneumonia in the absence of testing, or because the virus can cause symptoms such as stroke and kidney failure, which is just now being understood.

Now researchers at the Surgo Foundation have examined death rates at the county level in much of the U.S. Uh-oh. "Our data suggest that we may be especially undercounting COVID-19 deaths in Southern parts of the US. In more than 200 of the counties we examined, excess death rates were between two times to 30 times higher than reported COVID-19 death rates."

They conclude:

The data suggest we could be missing large numbers of COVID-19 deaths in places where testing is low. Using data from the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus database, we compared the rate of coronavirus testing with the reported rate of coronavirus deaths. . . . [S]tates with higher rates of testing have also seen higher rates of deaths attributed to COVID-19.

Why might this be? Testing has ramped up in areas hardest hit by coronavirus, so the COVID-19 death rate may be higher in these states simply because their outbreaks are worse and there are, in fact, more deaths per head among the population.

But another possible explanation is that states with lower testing rates are not catching, and therefore not counting, COVID-related deaths, which could make their reported death rates lower than in high-testing states — and lower than they are in reality.

This was the Resident's logic: If we don't test so many people, we won't have so many cases.  Works for southern governors too. Anyway the truth is that while the reported number of deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S., as of this writing, is nearly 100,000, the true number is likely at least 50% higher. Just so you know.