BBC: Coronavirus: England highest level of excess deaths. “The UK saw some of the biggest rises in deaths rates in Europe in the months until the middle of June, official analysis shows. England saw the largest increase in death rates in Europe, with Scotland seeing the third largest increase. The Office for National Statistics says that Spain saw the highest peak in rates of death in Europe. But the UK had the longest period of above-average deaths and so overall saw higher death rates.”
mortality
Texas Tribune: With 1,000 new coronavirus fatalities in Texas in just 6 days, the state’s death count is rising faster
Texas Tribune: With 1,000 new coronavirus fatalities in Texas in just 6 days, the state’s death count is rising faster. “Texas reached another grim milestone Sunday when it surpassed 5,000 deaths from the new coronavirus. In doing so, the state reported 1,000 deaths in six days, four days faster than it took to hit that total the previous time.”
Reuters: Spain’s COVID-19 death toll could be 60% higher than official count, says El Pais
Reuters: Spain’s COVID-19 death toll could be 60% higher than official count, says El Pais. “Spain’s COVID-19 death toll could be nearly 60% higher than the official figure of 28,432, according to an investigation by El Pais newspaper published on Sunday. The country’s official death toll includes only people who were formally diagnosed with the novel coronavirus, not suspected cases who were never tested.”
Kottke: A Time Lapse World Map of Every Covid-19 Death
Kottke: A Time Lapse World Map of Every Covid-19 Death. “From January to the end of June, over 500,000 people died of confirmed cases of Covid-19. In order to demonstrate the magnitude of the pandemic, James Beckwith made a time lapse map of each Covid-19 death.”
Brookings Institution: A new tool for tracking vulnerability and premature mortality in America
Brookings Institution: A new tool for tracking vulnerability and premature mortality in America. “…we have built an interactive vulnerability indicator that shows the links between state-level trends in well-being (optimism and worry) and county-level trends in deaths of despair. Our indicator allows users to see how these accord with county- and state-level trends in poverty, unemployment, and average household income. As such, the indicator allows users to see how these trends vary by populations, by state and county, and their relationship with trends in well-being (and ill-being).”
University of Minnesota: Three studies detail risk factors for COVID-19 death
University of Minnesota: Three studies detail risk factors for COVID-19 death. “JAMA Internal Medicine published two studies yesterday on factors tied to death in COVID-19 patients, one involving US patients and one highlighting Italian data, and a Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness study described the clinical features of 100 coronavirus patients who died in China.”
The Atlantic: A Second Coronavirus Death Surge Is Coming
The Atlantic: A Second Coronavirus Death Surge Is Coming. “Many people who don’t want COVID-19 to be the terrible crisis that it is have clung to the idea that more cases won’t mean more deaths. Some Americans have been perplexed by a downward trend of national deaths, even as cases exploded in the Sun Belt region. But given the policy choices that state and federal officials have made, the virus has done exactly what public-health experts expected. When states reopened in late April and May with plenty of infected people within their borders, cases began to grow. COVID-19 is highly transmissible, makes a large subset of people who catch it seriously ill, and kills many more people than the flu or any other infectious disease circulating in the country.”
AP: Florida hits new coronavirus death mark with 156 in one day
AP: Florida hits new coronavirus death mark with 156 in one day. “Florida reached another ominous mark Thursday with a record 156 deaths from the coronavirus reported in a single day as the state continues to experience a swift rise in cases. Officials in the hard-hit Miami area, meanwhile, were weighing another blanket lockdown.”
Talking Points Memo: FEMA Sends Texas 14 Mobile Morgues As Coronavirus Death Counts Rise
Talking Points Memo: FEMA Sends Texas 14 Mobile Morgues As Coronavirus Death Counts Rise. “The Sunbelt states buckling under COVID-19 have started making preparations for the worst to come: They’re ordering extra morgues. The mobile, refrigerated morgue units are supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency or on the private market, giving hospitals and local public health departments extra capacity to store the dead.”
BuzzFeed News: Texas, California, And Florida Are Now Seeing A Sharp Rise In COVID-19 Deaths
BuzzFeed News: Texas, California, And Florida Are Now Seeing A Sharp Rise In COVID-19 Deaths. “As experts feared would happen, COVID-19 deaths in the US have started to rise, following a surge in newly diagnosed cases beginning in the middle of June. The new spikes in deaths are largest in the two most populous states, California and Texas. And while infectious disease specialists are hopeful that the number of deaths won’t grow to match the carnage seen in New York State back in April, where the death toll peaked at around 1,000 per day, it’s unclear how quickly deaths may rise in the worst affected states in the coming weeks.”
UPDATE: Searchable Florida Medical Examiners COVID-19 database (Florida Today)
Florida Today: UPDATE: Searchable Florida Medical Examiners COVID-19 database. “The Florida Medical Examiners Commission maintains a spreadsheet of COVID-19 deaths. But in the early months of the pandemic, the descriptive narratives within the database were blocked by the state Department of Health from being released publicly. But after a legal challenge by media organizations, including the USA TODAY Network, the state began in mid May releasing the information unredacted.” Please note that this is disturbing content.
US coronavirus mortality rate not lowest in world, despite Trump claim: FACT CHECK (ABC News)
ABC News: US coronavirus mortality rate not lowest in world, despite Trump claim: FACT CHECK. “The mortality rate is the number of deaths from COVID-19 relative to the overall population. As of Tuesday, the United States had the ninth-worst mortality rate in the world, with 39.82 deaths per 100,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins University. The case-fatality rate is the number of deaths from COVID-19 relative to the total number of confirmed cases, shown as a percentage.”
Vox: Covid-19 cases are rising, but deaths are falling. What’s going on?
Vox: Covid-19 cases are rising, but deaths are falling. What’s going on?. “The numbers are genuinely strange to the naked eye: On July 3, the US reported 56,567 new Covid-19 cases, a record high. On the same day, 589 new deaths were reported, continuing a long and gradual decline. We haven’t seen numbers that low since the end of March. When laypeople observe those contradictory trends, they might naturally have a follow-up question: If deaths are not increasing along with cases, then why can’t we keep reopening? The lockdowns took an extraordinary toll of their own, after all, in money and mental health and some lives. If we could reopen the economy without the loss of life we saw in April and May, then why shouldn’t we?”
MIT Technology Review: If you’re over 75, catching covid-19 can be like playing Russian roulette
MIT Technology Review: If you’re over 75, catching covid-19 can be like playing Russian roulette. “I was reminded of the risk last week by this report from the New York City health department and Columbia University which estimated that on average, between March and May, the chance of dying if you get infected by SARS-CoV-2 was 1.45%. That’s higher than your lifetime chance of getting killed in a car wreck. That’s every driver cutting you off, every corner taken too fast, every time you nearly dozed off on the highway, all crammed into one. That’s not a disease I want to get. For someone my mother’s age, the chance of death came to 13.83% but ranged as high as 17%. That’s roughly 1 in 6, or the chance you’ll lose at Russian roulette. That’s not a game I want my mother to play.”
Washington Post: Heart conditions drove spike in deaths beyond those attributed to covid-19, analysis shows
Washington Post: Heart conditions drove spike in deaths beyond those attributed to covid-19, analysis shows. “The coronavirus killed tens of thousands in the United States during the pandemic’s first months, but it also left a lesser-known toll: thousands more deaths than would have been expected from heart disease and a handful of other medical conditions, according to an analysis of federal data by The Washington Post.”
