A warning that there will be a barrage of posts on many subjects over the next few days. This one is about current COVID death rates, per CDC

84% of the US population, per CDC, are bivalent booster antivaxxers. (100%-16.4%)

COVID cases keep trending down. But because the disease is now usually quite mild, many do not test or notify the authorities of a case. So these numbers may not be accurate. Deaths are a more accurate measure.

Deaths are supposedly going up a little bit. But there is another CDC chart (first time I had seen this one) that tells us over time, what percentage of the designated COVID deaths actually had COVID as the underlying cause, vs having tested positive but COVID was not the primary cause of death. Overall, CDC says COVID recently caused 60% of the [COVID-designated] deaths and was not the main cause of death in 40%. So 60% of 2060 is 1,236 deaths caused by COVID per week. Multiply that by 52 weeks and you get an estimate of 64,000 deaths/year due to COVID currently. How does that compare with deaths from other causes?

CDC’s 2021 causes of death data are below. COVID deaths are currently occurring at a similar rate as deaths due to liver disease. Or around 15% (1/7th) the COVID death rate claimed by CDC for 2021.

I wanted to look at mortality rates over time, but CDC doees not include the last two years in its graphs. I wanted to look at maternal mortality (deaths related to childbirth) because there have been reports that this has skyrocketed. But CDC is not up to date on this (just releasing the 2018 data) and CDC has decided to change both its data collection and coding methods for childbirth-related deaths. So they are making it very difficult to compare current data with past years. How convenient for them.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/maternal-mortality/index.htm

I was also interested in current numbers on excess deaths, but it seems there is a glitch there too. Wonder what could have gone wrong?

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm