emeritrixI would not be surprised if the numbers of COVID-19 deaths were even higher than this new estimate.
"The actual number of US deaths caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection has been investigated and debated since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we use machine learning trained on US death certificates from March 2020 to December 2021 to predict 155,536 (95% uncertainty interval: 150,062 to 161,112) unrecognized COVID-19 deaths. This indicates that 19% more COVID-19 deaths occurred in the US than officially reported. Predicted unrecognized COVID-19 deaths occurred disproportionately among decedents with less than a high school education; decedents identified as Hispanic, American Indian, Alaska Native, Asian, and/or Black; counties with lower household incomes and worse preexisting health; and counties in the South. These findings suggest that the US death investigation system undercounted COVID-19 deaths unevenly, hiding the true extent of inequities."
AP news report: https://apnews.com/article/covid-deaths-pandemic-2116ac576c57e4f4c65ff42182d4a4ef
Scientific study report: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aef5697
Study estimates more than 150,000 uncounted COVID-19 pandemic deaths
A new study says the early U.S. COVID-19 death toll is much higher than official counts, and that there were disparities in which deaths were missing from those tallies. About 840,000 deaths were logged in 2020 and 2021. On Wednesday, researchers report in Science Advances that up to 155,000 more COVID-19 deaths went unrecognized. The missing deaths cluster in the first months of the pandemic. The study says Hispanic people faced higher odds of going uncounted. It also points to several Southern and Southwestern states. Researchers link the gap to limited testing and uneven death investigations.
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