Unacceptable Legacy: Deaths Over the Last 4 Years

Newsmax published on Dec. 15 an Associated Press article that reported that deaths in America in 2022, from all causes including COVID, are projected to be lower than in 2021 and 2020.

However, the article, “US Deaths Fell This Year, But Not to Pre-COVID Levels,” not only contains statistical errors, but also omits critical epidemiological facts.

While Mike Stobbe, the article’s author, properly uses total deaths in 2019 as a baseline, he neglects to inform readers that there were 2,855,000 in the year before the COVID pandemic struck America.

He also doesn’t specify that in 2020, there were 3,390,000 deaths from all causes, which are an unprecedented increase of 535,000 deaths, or 19% from 2019.

Moreover, while the Associated Press medical writer correctly states that 2021 was the “deadliest year in U.S. history, with more than 3.4 million” deaths, the actual total is 3,472,000, according to the U.S. Centers of Disease and Control.

Thus, there were 82,000 more deaths from all causes in 2021 than the horrendous toll in 2020. There were also 617,000 more fatalities in 2021, or 22%, than the 2,855,000 in 2019.

While Stobbe projects that the 2022 death count will be “at least 13% higher” than the total in 2019, he doesn’t specify this extrapolation yields 3,226,000 fatalities.

In fact, since his article was published three weeks ago, the CDC has counted 3,154,000 deaths in 2022 (as of Jan. 5, 2023). But total fatalities last year won’t be completely tallied until early March.

December’s current incomplete total is 187,000 deaths, as compared to 320,000 deaths from all causes in Dec. 2021, and 367,000 in Dec. 2020.

My conservative extrapolation of uncounted deaths in 2022 is 100,000, which would bring last year’s grim toll to 3,254,000.

In addition to Stobbe’s flawed reporting of total deaths during the last four years, his analysis of COVID deaths during the last three years has serious omissions and errors.

While he accurately reported that “more than 1,080,000 Americans” have died since early 2020, he does not provide the annual COVID death counts: 386,000 in 2020; 463,000 in 2021; and an incompletely tallied 239,000 in 2022.

Therefore, President Joe Biden’s COVID death total since Jan. 20, 2021 is at least 638,000, as compared to 450,000 during former President Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House. As of Jan. 5, 2023, the CDC has counted 1,088,000 COVID deaths.

Second, Stobbe erroneously claims “monthly COVID-19 deaths dropped below 4,000 in April and averaged about 16,000 per month through November.”

In fact, the CDC reports 6,245 COVID deaths in April 2022, which is the lowest monthly total since the pandemic erupted with 7,175 deaths in March 2020. And for the first 11 months of 2022, COVID deaths averaged 21,000 — and not 16,000 — per month.

Furthermore, the AP reporter quotes a University of Texas researcher, that the “bulk of mortality was concentrated during that omicron wave at the beginning of the year.” Yet he ignores the crucial fact that during the first quarter of this year, there were 150,000 COVID deaths, or an average of 50,000 per month.

But, as this weekly graph from the CDC’s “COVID Data Tracker” demonstrates, there was no exponential jumps in COVID deaths between April and December of last year. The highest toll, according to the CDC’s “Provisional Death Counts,” was 14,000 deaths in August 2022.

By contrast, in both 2020 and 2021, there were explosions of COVID deaths in the summer and late autumn. There were, for example, 11,000 COVID deaths in July 2021, but 49,000 in Aug. 2021, and 63,000 in Sept. 2021.

During former President Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House, the U.S. had 2,814,000 deaths from all causes in 2017, and 2,839,000 in 2018.

In 2019, as previously noted, there were 2,855,000 deaths in 2019, and 3,390,000 in 2020.

Thus, President Trump’s average is 2,975,000 annual deaths.

By contrast, during President Biden’s first year in office in 2021, America suffered 3,472,000 deaths from all causes, which are, to repeat, 617,000 more than in 2019.

Since my conservative extrapolation is 3,254,000 deaths in 2022, there will be 399,000 more deaths in Biden’s second year in the White House, than in 2019.

So during Biden’s catastrophic two years as president, there will be approximately 1,016,000 more deaths than the 2,855,000 in 2019, or an abominable 508,000 annually.

Americans must be reminded of Joe Biden’s unconditional declaration, to the first question from moderator Kristen Welker, during the second presidential debate in late Oct. 2020: Asked how he “would lead the country” out of the COVID crisis, the former vice president replied that “anyone who is responsible” for 220,000 American deaths “should not remain as president of the United States of America.”

Et tu, Biden.