USA Preview: Age-stratified excess mortality

Excess mortality since 2015 based on weekly population estimates

Summary

This is another short preview into my analysis of the US data.

I have already estimated population size for all states and age groups, but will only display charts representing national figures in this post.

The more familiar I become with the US data, the less confident I am that SARS-CoV-2 explains what we are seeing on these charts.

Estimates of SARS-CoV-2’s first occurrence and the time it took to spread globally are based on this article.

Methods

I base my population estimates on the Census bureau’s mid-year population estimates from 2014 to 2021 which you can find here.

My method of estimating weekly population size is very basic:

• Weekly deaths are subtracted from the previous year’s estimate as they occur.

• The difference between the result after one year of subtracting deaths and the next year’s census estimate is distributed evenly onto this year

• For the time after the mid-year estimate for 2021 I assume the same linear growth that we saw between the 2020 and 2021 estimates

• I use the weekly averages from 2015 to 2019 as reference to calculate excess mortality

I must say that this method gives much more plausible results than my old method of assuming an underlying linear demographic trend in the raw mortality data.

My former method is quick and efficient, but it is ill-suited for the US data for reasons I might explain in another article.

In the results section I am presenting:

• Age-stratified national weekly deaths per 100k

• Age-stratified national weekly excess deaths, relative

• Age-stratified national weekly excess deaths, absolute

• Age-stratified national cumulative excess deaths, absolute

Deaths per 100k

Excess deaths, relative

Excess deaths, absolute

Cumulative excess deaths

February 22nd 1943

Yesterday marked the 80th anniversary of Sophie Scholl’s execution. If you do not know who she is, I kindly ask you to find out and take a minute to cherish the memory of this outstanding human being. Truly a pillar of light in the darkest years my Heimat has seen.

I like to think she lives on in everyone of us.