June 27, 2020: Excess Deaths -

This topic is grim and also mysterious, and I’ve been watching the numbers for several weeks, but hesitating to post about it. The chart on Excess Deaths comes from deep within the Oregon Health Authority website, a link within the text-heavy weekly report. 

The blue line shows the average number of deaths over the past five years, for each week of the year. (On the site, you can switch to a three-year average, if you prefer.)

The gold line represents deaths for each week of 2020. (It ends a few weeks back, because there is always a lag of a few weeks in death stats, as you know if you’ve ever waited to receive a death certificate.) 

In the middle of March, when the pandemic hit (see the red line), 2020 deaths went above the average 5-year number, and with the rare exception, they have stayed there. We have had more deaths since mid-March than usual, several hundred all in all.  In fact, in the second week of June (the last week shown), there were 104 more deaths than the five-year average. Bad week.

The red line at the bottom of the chart represents the number of deaths in the state (beginning in mid-March) that have been attributed to COVID-19. So for that same second week of June, there were 104 more deaths than average, and 16 of them were attributed to COVID.

As you can see, looking at the gold line versus the red line, excess deaths far outnumber the COVID-19 deaths. If you go to the site, you can hover over any given point and see details for that week.

At their highest level, the OHA website reports, COVID-19 deaths accounted for only 20% of the excess.

So then, what causes–of-death are represented in the rest of the excess?

They aren’t traffic deaths, homicides, or suicides, all of which are down. They are all deaths from “natural causes,” which I discovered by going to some of the “Deaths by Manner” pages. 

As far as I could determine, though, there isn’t a breakdown within “natural causes” listing, say, cancer vs. heart disease vs influenza.  So for now, at least, the mystery remains unsolved.  We can speculate. Some people may be dying of COVID-19, but not getting counted in that category because they were never tested. Some may have put off going to the hospital, or had trouble regulating chronic and serious ailments. In time, maybe we will know.

(The New York Times did an excess deaths graph back in April, but it doesn’t have the equivalent of that little red COVID-19 line. The Washington Post did one based on a Yalestudy at the end of May, covering numbers up to May 9^th.  I find the charts very hard to interpret. The CDC has seventeen different dashboards, but I couldn’t find anything as clear as the Oregon graph. Also, if you go to the CDC site, note that the conventions for blue, gold, and red are not the same as the Oregon graphs.