The New York Times Catches Up With Me

Worse than Spanish Influenza

I've been talking about how excess deaths is the best measure of Covid-19 mortality, (see here and here) and now the New York Times has discovered the statistical measure.

It only took them a year, though the graph surprised me.

It turns out that Covid is worse than the Spanish Influenza epidemic: 

A surge in deaths from the Covid-19 pandemic created the largest gap between the actual and expected death rate in 2020 — what epidemiologists call “excess deaths,” or deaths above normal.

Aside from fatalities directly attributed to Covid-19, some excess deaths last year were most likely undercounts of the virus or misdiagnoses, or indirectly related to the pandemic otherwise. Preliminary federal data show that overdose deaths have also surged during the pandemic.

………

In 2020, however, the United States saw the largest single-year surge in the death rate since federal statistics became available. The rate increased 16 percent from 2019, even more than the 12 percent jump during the 1918 flu pandemic.

These numbers are really f%$#ing scary.