Abstract
Background Some have claimed that the number of Covid-19 deaths is not much greater than would be experienced in the usual course of events. We sought to estimate the number of deaths due to Covid-19 in the United States and compare that number to the number of expected deaths in the same time period.
Methods To obtain the number of Covid-19 deaths, we multiplied published infection fatality rates by age by population numbers and assumed infection rates. The number of Covid-19 deaths was compared to the number of deaths using life table mortality rates.
Results A population infection rate of 3.2% will be needed to generate the number of Covid-19 deaths predicted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation during April and May 2020. There would be 71,424 excess deaths over those two months. Under normal conditions it would take 9.2 months to generate 71,424 deaths.
Conclusions During April and May 2020 over 80% of the Covid-19 deaths can be classified as excess deaths. These deaths would normally occur over 9.2 months instead of 2 months.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Funding Statement
No external funding was received.
Author Declarations
All relevant ethical guidelines have been followed; any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained and details of the IRB/oversight body are included in the manuscript.
Yes
All necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived.
Yes
I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).
Yes
I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable.
Yes
Data Availability
All data used in the analyses are available online.