Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live

by Nicholas A. Christakis MD PhD

By tracking excess deaths overall or for a specific category of causes of death, such as “pneumonia and influenza,” it is possible to detect a spike in cases in the United States in late February and early March, even before COVID-19 was widely recognized as a problem; this helps quantify possible underreporting due to misdiagnosed or overlooked cases. For instance, an analysis of national data from early January 2020 through March 28, 2020, by scientists at Yale found that California reported 101 deaths due to COVID-19 during this period, but there were actually 399 excess deaths due to pneumonia and influenza. Many or most of those deaths were surely from COVID-19. Looking at all causes of death combined in New York and New Jersey in this same period, the investigators found that there was as much as a threefold increase in total deaths as the pandemic swept through those two states during its first wave, regardless of how many cases of COVID-19 were actually diagnosed by health-care personnel.85 And looking at the entire United States through the end of May 2020, researchers concluded that the reported number of COVID-19 deaths was likely 22 percent lower than the true number of deaths.