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- Written by: Ronald D. Fricker Jr., Virginia Tech
The number of deaths in the United States through July 2020 is 8% to 12% higher than it would have been if the coronavirus pandemic had never happened. That’s at least 164,937 deaths above the number expected for the first seven months of the year – 16,183 more than the number attributed to COVID-19 thus far for that period – and it could be as high as 204,691.
Tracking deaths
When someone dies, the death certificate records an immediate cause of death, along with up to three underlying conditions that “initiated the events resulting in death.” The certificate is filed with the local health department, and the details are reported to the National Center for Health Statistics.
As part of the National Vital Statistics System, the NCHS then uses this information in various ways, such as tabulating the leading causes of death in the United States – currently heart disease, followed by cancer. Sometime this fall, COVID-19 will likely become the third-largest cause of death for 2020.
Projecting from the past
To calculate excess deaths requires a comparison to what would have occurred if COVID-19 had not existed. Obviously, it’s not possible to observe what didn’t happen, but it is possible to estimate it using historical data. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does this using a statistical model, based on the previous three years of mortality data, incorporating seasonal trends as well as adjustments for data-reporting delays.
So, looking at what happened over the past three years, the CDC projects what might have been. By using a statistical model, they are also able to calculate the uncertainty in their estimates. That allows statisticians like me to assess whether the observed data look unusual compared to projections.
The number of excess deaths is the difference between the model’s projections and the actual observations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also calculates an upper threshold for the estimated number of deaths – that helps determine when the observed number of deaths is unusually high compared to historical trends.
Clearly visible in a graph of this data is the spike in deaths beginning in mid-March 2020 and continuing to the present. You can also see another period of excess deaths from December 2017 to January 2018, attributable to an unusually virulent flu strain that year. The magnitude of the excess deaths in 2020 makes clear that COVID-19 is much worse than influenza, even when compared to a bad flu year like 2017-18, when an estimated 61,000 people in the U.S. died of the illness.
The large spike in deaths in April 2020 corresponds to the coronavirus outbreak in New York and the Northeast, after which the number of excess deaths decreased regularly and substantially until July, when it started to increase again. This current uptick in excess deaths is attributable to the outbreaks in the South and West that have occurred since June.
The data tell the story
It doesn’t take a sophisticated statistical model to see that the coronavirus pandemic is causing substantially more deaths than would have otherwise occurred.
The number of deaths the CDC officially attributed to COVID-19 in the United States exceeded 148,754 by Aug. 1. Some people who are skeptical about aspects of the coronavirus suggest these are deaths that would have occurred anyway, perhaps because COVID-19 is particularly deadly for the elderly. Others believe that, because the pandemic has changed life so drastically, the increase in COVID-19-related deaths is probably offset by decreases from other causes. But neither of these possibilities is true.
In fact, the number of excess deaths currently exceeds the number attributable to COVID-19 by more than 16,000 people in the U.S. What’s behind that discrepancy is not yet clear. COVID-19 deaths could be being undercounted, or the pandemic could also be causing increases in other types of death. It’s probably some of both.
Regardless of the reason, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in substantially more deaths than would have otherwise occurred … and it is not over yet.
Ronald D. Fricker Jr., Professor of Statistics and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Administration, Virginia Tech
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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- Written by: NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
An SUV-size space rock flew past our planet last weekend and was detected by a NASA-funded asteroid survey as it departed.
Near Earth asteroids, or NEAs, pass by our home planet all the time. But an SUV-size asteroid set the record this past weekend for coming closer to Earth than any other known NEA: It passed 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) above the southern Indian Ocean on Sunday, Aug. 16 at 12:08 a.m. EDT (Saturday, Aug. 15 at 9:08 p.m. PDT).
At roughly 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters) across, asteroid 2020 QG is very small by asteroid standards: If it had actually been on an impact trajectory, it would likely have become a fireball as it broke up in Earth's atmosphere, which happens several times a year.
By some estimates, there are hundreds of millions of small asteroids the size of 2020 QG, but they are extremely hard to discover until they get very close to Earth. The vast majority of NEAs pass by safely at much greater distances – usually much farther away than the Moon.
"It's really cool to see a small asteroid come by this close, because we can see the Earth's gravity dramatically bend its trajectory," said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "Our calculations show that this asteroid got turned by 45 degrees or so as it swung by our planet."
Zipping along at almost 8 miles per second (12.3 kilometers per second) – a little slower than average, Chodas noted – 2020 QG was first recorded as just a long streak in a wide-field camera image taken by the Zwicky Transient Facility.
The image was taken six hours after the closest point of approach as the asteroid was heading away from Earth. A sky-scanning survey telescope funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA, the Zwicky Transient Facility is based at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in San Diego County. NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program funds data processing for NEO detections.
Asteroid 2020 QG enters the record books as the closest known nonimpacting asteroid; many very small asteroids impact our planet every year, but only a few have actually been detected in space a few hours before impacting Earth. On average, an asteroid the size of 2020 QG passes this closely only a few times a year.
In 2005, Congress assigned NASA the goal of finding 90% of the near-Earth asteroids that are about 460 feet (140 meters) or larger in size. These larger asteroids pose a much greater threat if they were to impact, and they can be detected much farther away from Earth, because their rate of motion across the sky is typically much smaller at that distance.
"It's quite an accomplishment to find these tiny close-in asteroids in the first place, because they pass by so fast," Chodas said. "There's typically only a short window of a couple of days before or after close approach when this small of an asteroid is close enough to Earth to be bright enough but not so close that it moves too fast in the sky to be detected by a telescope."
A division of Caltech in Pasadena, JPL hosts CNEOS for NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program in NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office.
More information about CNEOS, asteroids and near-Earth objects can be found at https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov.
For more information about NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, visit https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense.
For asteroid and comet news and updates, follow @AsteroidWatch on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AsteroidWatch.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Firefighters held the LNU Lightning Complex to a smaller amount of daytime growth on Saturday as more resources arrived to assist the effort.
The complex was up to 325,128 acres on Saturday night, a growth of just under 11,000 acres during the course of the day, with containment remaining at 15 percent.
On Thursday and Friday, the complex had grown 84,000 and 83,000 acres, respectively, as Lake County News has reported.
The Hennessey fire, the portion of the complex burning in Lake, Napa, Solano and Yolo counties, has so far burned 271,714 acres and is 17-percent contained, Cal Fire said.
On the Sonoma County side of the fire, the Walbridge fire west of Healdsburg is up to 51,069 acres and the Meyers fire north of Jenner is at 2,345 acres. Cal Fire said there is no containment on either of those fires.
On Saturday evening, Cal Fire said the number of structures destroyed increased to 845, with damaged structures numbering 231. Another 30,500 remain threatened.
Cal Fire Sonoma Lake Napa Unit Chief Shana Jones said in a Saturday morning briefing that the LNU Lightning Complex remains the No. 1 priority in the state for resources that become available.
“Within an incident this size and complexity, and with all the fire activity throughout the state, all of our resources remain stretched to a capacity that we have not seen in recent history,” Jones said.
More resources are coming in from out of state to help fight the fires around California, but Jones said, “We are not out of the woods.”
A few hundred more firefighters and dozens of additional engines joined the fight on Saturday. Cal Fire said assigned resources included 1,704 personnel, 233 engines, 33 water tenders, 11 helicopters, 15 hand crews and 37 dozers.
The fire’s continued growth led to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office issuing a new evacuation order for areas near Lower Lake and an evacuation warning for areas north of Lower Lake to Highway 20, excluding the city of Clearlake.
An evacuation order for the Hidden Valley Lake and Jerusalem Valley areas remains in effect, as does an evacuation warning for the greater Middletown area, including Middletown proper.
As predicted on Saturday, the wind shifted and caused Lake County’s air basin to fill with smoke, making visibility challenging for firefighting forces, according to radio reports.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Lake County News reports
Shortly before 4:30 p.m. Saturday, the sheriff’s office issued an evacuation warning for all residences and areas east of Highway 29, north of Morgan Valley Road, south of Highway 20 and west of the previous warning/evacuation line at Sky High Ridge Road, from Morgan Valley Road extending north to Highway 20, not to include any residents within the city limits of Clearlake.
“We are asking everyone to take preparations in the event that a mandatory evacuation order is issued. Preparations should include gathering all medications, important documents, making plans for pets, and notifying family members where you may be going. Those requiring additional time to evacuate or those with pets or livestock should leave the area as soon as possible,” the sheriff’s office said.
The sheriff’s office urged people to evacuate early in order to avoid hectic traffic conditions and keep themselves, their neighbors and first responders safe.
Should an evacuation order be issued and shelter is needed, evacuees will be directed to a temporary evacuation point.