2020

The real death toll from the pandemic in America may already be 300,000

Deaths from all causes — not just Covid-19 — are up since the pandemic started, a CDC report found.

By Julia Belluz@juliaoftoronto Oct 21, 2020, 10:10am EDT

The official Covid-19 mortality figures might be dramatically underestimating the real deathtoll of the pandemic in the US, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

From late January to early October, nearly 300,000 “excess deaths” occurred in America, the report authors estimate. That’s about a third more than the 216,025 coronavirus deaths the US reported in the same period.

Where Have All the Hospital Patients Gone?

Weathered, wiry and in his early 60s, the man stumbled into clinic, trailing cigarette smoke and clutching his chest. Over the previousweek, he had had fleeting episodes of chest pressure but stayed away from the hospital.

“I didn’t want to get the coronavirus,” he gasped as the nurses unbuttoned his shirt to get an EKG. Only when his pain had becomerelentless did he feel he had no choice but to come in.

In pre-pandemic times, patients like him were routine at my Boston-area hospital; we saw them almost every day. But for much of thespring and summer, the halls and parking lots were eerily empty. I wondered if people were staying home and getting sicker, and Iimagined that in a few months’ time these patients, once they became too ill to manage on their own, might flood the emergency rooms,wards and I.C.U.s, in a non-Covid wave.