US Deaths Soared In Early Weeks of Pandemic, Far Exceeding Number Attributed To COVID-19

hackingbear writes: According to The Washington Post, U.S. deaths soared in the early weeks of the pandemic, surpassing the number of COVID-19 related deaths, as well as the number normally expected for the time period. An estimated 15,400 excess deaths occurred from March 1 to April 4, nearly double the 8,128 deaths attributed to COVID-19 during that time. The excess deaths estimate was calculated by subtracting the expected seasonal baseline from all deaths but may be attributed to causes other than COVID-19 directly, such as patients afraid of visiting hospitals. On April 15, the New York City revised its COVID-19 death toll upward by 3,778 to account for people who were not tested but presumed to have died from the virus. On April 17, the city of Wuhan, the original epicenter of COVID-19, similarly raised death toll by 1,290 to account for omission due to overwhelmed hospitals in the early days of the epidemic in the city, but the change was viewed as an "evidence" of prior cover-up in the West. The excess deaths "could include people who died because of the epidemic but not from the disease, such as those who were afraid to seek medical treatment for unrelated illnesses, as well as some number of deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate," notes The Washington Post. "The count is also affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as suicides, homicides and motor vehicle accidents." "But in any pandemic, higher-than-normal mortality is a starting point for scientists seeking to understand the full impact of the disease."

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