A new article in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association by Woolf et al., reports on excess deaths in the US and its states, from March 1 to August 1, 2020. Even if all of these are not directly due to Covid-19, it doesn’t make any difference to those who died or to those mourning for them. They are casualties of a pandemic that has been running wild in our country, while it has been stopped in many other countries.
In the US over the above 5 months there were 226,000 excess deaths, of which only 67% were attributed at least in part to Covid-19. That leaves 33% of them or a half uncounted in Covid-19 confirmed death reports.
We show results for individual states in a table, starting with the US and the four largest states by population, and then ordering states by excess mortality per 100,000. We then list their percent listed as due to Covid-19, and finally, their excess deaths over those expected in a normal period for those months.
| State | Excess Mortality per 100,000 | % Listed as Covid-19 | Excess Deaths |
| US | 72 | 67% | 225,530 |
| CA | 43 | 61% | 17,002 |
| TX | 62 | 56% | 17,772 |
| FL | 67 | 60% | 14,250 |
| NY | 209 | 78% | 40,863 |
| NJ | 202 | 78% | 18,004 |
| D.C. | 129 | 74% | 907 |
| MA | 120 | 95% | 8,261 |
| AZ | 104 | 53% | 7,471 |
| MS | 104 | 56% | 3,104 |
| MD | 96 | 66% | 5,809 |
| DL | 93 | 54% | 899 |
| RI | 89 | 104% | 940 |
| MI | 88 | 67% | 8,797 |
| IL | 83 | 66% | 10,601 |
| AL | 81 | 53% | 3,936 |
| SC | 79 | 47% | 4,009 |
| PA | 71 | 83% | 9,106 |
For California, the 61% confirmed Covid-19 deaths means that 39% of excess deaths were not included. The ratio 39%/61% = 0.64 means that their were 64% more deaths than were attributed to Covid-18, during that time period.
For Texas, the 56% confirmed Covid-19 deaths means that 44% of excess deaths were not included. The ratio 44%/56% = 0.79 means that there were 79% more excess deaths than those attributed to Covid-19.
In Trump’s town hall, he said we did better in excess deaths than European countries, so he is well aware of this.
