Many complex analyses have surfaced purportedly showing that there have not been significantly more deaths in 2020 than there were in 2019, and that therefore the threat from COVID has been exaggerated. While some forecasts of the potential effects of COVID were indeed inaccurate, the data on total deaths are incredibly straightforward.
Rather than looking at deaths ascribed to COVID, let’s examine the data for all deaths in the United States. You can download the CDC’s data for all deaths here, by clicking the “export” button at the top of the page:
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Counts-of-Deaths-by-State-and-Select-Causes/muzy-jte6
Reviewing the downloaded spreadsheet, there were 2,852,610 deaths from all causes in 2019.
