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@Science

So seems the latest wave of stupid on the internet is to claim that the deaths in 2020 were no more than in 2018, 2019 or other past years, which apparently means the coronavirus is a hoax or some such nonsense.

Nevermind the fact that there isn't an iota of truth anywhere in that nonsense. The number of deaths in 2020 is significantly higher than past years. In fact even though we only have data up to the beginning of december and 2 weeks of that is incomplete/delayed.. therefore we have about 6 weeks of data yet to be finalized. Despite that we are hundreds of thousands more deaths ahead of 2019 and 2018, by about 300,000 more so far. Hell the death rate is increased even if you **dont count** COVID by more than 1.2%...

Here is a crazy idea, instead of getting your knowledge base from random internet memes how about trying some research from time to time maybe? It isnt like its hard to find the real numbers.

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@freemo Oh man. I've blocked whole domains because they started to become their own bubble with many accounts from those domains confirming to each other that yes, they are right, and we are wrong.

They call themselves freethinkers, but the only things they're free of is a proper background education.

@freemo

Source? I've spent time trying to just get the data, looking at the CDC and other sites, and they make it very difficult to pull your own numbers on it.

Would be very interested in getting the actual mortality rates by week, over the past 36 months, in a usable format.

@Atlas There are many sources, all of which agree with the stated facts here.

Since 2020 isnt complete yet you would likely need to get historic data seperate from current year data.

Here is one source for historic data up to 2019:

population.un.org/wpp/

For 2020 you will need dataset from a provisional source since 2020 isnt complete. Here is a source of that data for 2020

data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Count

@freemo

If I can get the data by week, they should have the data updated through at least September/October. You can do current YTD vs PYTD same period.

thanks, I'll look at the links

@Atlas The data up to about the beginning of november should be reasonably accurate, anything after that is likely not the final numbers as death certificates still keep coming.

@freemo @Atlas
I think I'm misunderstanding the data you're presenting here. When looking through the interactive datasets at population.un.org, they all have year spans of 5 years. This granularity is too high to resolve possible impacts of Covid, even if the 2020 data isn't in there yet. The second source you shared from data.cdc.gov suggests that 2020 deaths are far lower than 2019, I think. At lease, when I trace my data with years on X and all deaths on Y, we see a significant decrease across the years. If data as far up as November is included, then it looks like we're in for a super low death year. I'm assuming I've made some mistake in this. Can you point me toward it?

@lcvqoto

I personally use more rigorously compiled data that a different set of scientists compiled from 15 reliable sources and aggregated and scrubbed. The links I provided were just to help find a public data source that shows similar trends. If you are saying its a 5 year rolling average I may have missed that.

Others from the thread have contributed other data sources and visualizations as well that also support the assertions I made, here is an alternative one for you that also shows a significant spike in 2020:

euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

@Atlas

@Atlas @freemo the reporting granularity and reliability is too poor for that. Most "surge" claims have been results of delayed or false reports.

@Atlas @freemo
I agree, it'd be great to see this data and it's been hard to find. Everything I've found either ends at 2018 or has too high granularity to resolve the actual impact of covid-19.

@freemo @Science What would you say to people who say that the numbers have been fudged by counting everything as a coronavirus death even when it isn't?

@Hyolobrika

I'd remind them that simply saying something is true, when there is no evidence to back it up, is not really doing anyone any favors. Our reporting standards as to how we report a cause of death has not significantly changed in 2020.

@Science

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