Nationwide mortality data is available back to 1900, so here’s what that chart looks like with 300,000 more deaths than normal in 2020.
By this measure, Covid-19 is again the biggest deal since the 1918 influenza pandemic, but it’s nowhere close to as big a deal as that. The estimated mortality increase this year is also only slightly bigger than during influenza epidemics in 1928 and 1936. Influenza viruses were first isolated by researchers in the mid-1930s, and vaccines began to develop not long after that, which helps explain why the 1957-1958 and 1968 influenza pandemics are barely detectable on the chart.
The CDC also calculates age-adjusted mortality, which attempts to correct for changes in the age distribution through the years. The percentage of Americans 65 and older is a lot higher than it was a century ago, and that age cohort is, well, more prone to death than the others. So age-adjusted mortality represents what mortality rates would be if the age distribution remained roughly constant through the years, in this case with 2000 as the index year. The CDC hasn’t released full-year age-adjusted mortality rate estimates for 2019 yet, so I used its estimate for the four quarters ending Sept. 30. For 2020, I did my own adjusting using 2019 population estimates and the age distribution of deaths reported so far this year to the CDC.
The 2020 mortality increase here is again the biggest since 1918 in percentage terms. But it only returns the age-adjusted mortality rate to where it was in 2006. I guess one could argue that this means we all ought to chill out — the U.S. was accustomed to this level of mortality as recently as a decade and a half ago, after all. Given that some other countries have been able to get through the Covid-19 pandemic so far with no detectable increase in mortality at all, though, that seems like a cop-out.
Finally there’s that gap, mentioned in passing above, between the increase in overall deaths and the number of deaths that have been attributed to Covid-19. Most of these deaths represent undercounting of Covid-19 cases, especially early in the pandemic when few tests for the disease were available. Some, though, may be collateral damage: suicides, shootings, medical conditions that weren’t identified or treated in time. Some critics of Covid-related lockdowns have blamed this on the lockdowns, and in some cases they’re probably right. But by this point doctors’ offices are open again, even if some patients are afraid to go, and the continuing economic and societal damage seems to be emanating more from the failure to control the pandemic than the measures taken to thwart it. Yes, some of the restrictions imposed in March and April may have been overkill, but the thing that’s killing people now — directly or indirectly — is Covid-19.
Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He was the editorial director of Harvard Business Review and wrote for Time, Fortune and American Banker. He is the author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”