The true death toll from the coronavirus pandemic in the United States is massively higher than the mere data from those who died COVID-19 positive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Data shows excess deaths in the past year to be approaching 600,000, which takes the number of people who die from any cause in a given region and period and then compares it with a baseline from recent years.
More than 569,397 more people than expected have died since the start of the pandemic, according to the CDC.
"These deaths could represent misclassified COVID-19 deaths, or potentially could be indirectly related to the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., deaths from other causes occurring in the context of health care shortages or overburdened health care systems)," the CDC website reads.
The official COVID-19 death tally at the end of the Trump administration was 409,000.
Death rates are traditionally higher in the winter months, but a graph of the CDC excess death data shows the rate exceeding the expected threshold starting late April of last year and only now regressing back to it.
"The estimates of excess deaths reported here may not be due to COVID-19, either directly or indirectly," according to the CDC website. "The pandemic may have changed mortality patterns for other causes of death. Upward trends in other causes of death (e.g., suicide, drug overdose, heart disease) may contribute to excess deaths in some jurisdictions. Future analyses of cause-specific excess mortality may provide additional information about these patterns."
Operation Warp Speed has delivered vaccines to millions of Americans and President Joe Biden has recently announced purchase agreements with vaccine makers which will give the U.S. enough vaccines to vaccinate the entire U.S. population by late summer.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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