The number of people reported to have died of the novel coronavirus in the United States surpassed 100,000 this week, a grim marker of lives lost directly to the disease, but an analysis of overall deaths during the pandemic shows that the nation probably reached a similar terrible milestone three weeks ago.
Between March 1 and May 9, the nation recorded an estimated 101,600 excess deaths, or deaths beyond the number that would normally be expected for that time of year, according to an analysis conducted for The Washington Post by a research team led by the Yale School of Public Health. That figure reflects about 26,000 more fatalities than were attributed to covid-19 on death certificates during that period, according to federal data.
Those 26,000 fatalities were not necessarily caused directly by the virus. They could also include people who died as a result of the epidemic but not from the disease itself, such as those who were afraid to seek medical help for unrelated illnesses. Increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as motor vehicle accidents, also affect the count.
Such “excess death” analyses are a standard tool used by epidemiologists to gauge the true toll of infectious-disease outbreaks and other widespread disasters.
Governments are full of people, and people do some pretty weird shit sometimes.
We need to know things, but some of those things need to be soft-peddled to us so we don't go completely nuts.
Because once people are pretty sure they've been bamboozled, they get really antsy, and if there's any kind of instigating incident that confirms it - even if it's something that seems unrelated - things can go all squirrelly in a big fuckin' way, in a big fuckin' hurry - like now.
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