How many COVID cases are there really?
Bottom Line: The latest CDC study on how COVID is being spread caught my attention yesterday. In a separate story today, I breakdown who is spreading the vid’ and how it’s happening. One number in particular made me wonder how many COVID-19 cases are really out there. That number...24%. According to the CDC that’s the percentage of people who have the rona’ but never show symptoms. While there’s no way to precisely know how many people have the virus but never get tested, one way to get closer to reality is through the CDC’s excess death information. By comparing the number of COVID-19 attributed deaths to the CDC’s excess deaths – we have an idea as to how much of what’s going on has been detected.
The metric averages five years of deaths calculated weekly and adjusted by population changes. This is helpful because it’s accounts for all variables. Whether everyone had been tested for the virus or if no one had. It also doesn’t matter how deaths were categorized. Simply, how many people died and how many normally would have? Here’s the breakdown... The most recent excess death data we have is from January 9th. So that’s where I’m drawing the comparison.
- Total deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the US (as of January 9th): 381,432
- Excess deaths since the pandemic began: 471,342 (as of the week ended January 9th)
- Total excess deaths beyond reported COVID cases – 89,910
So, what’s this mean? It means there at 19% more people who died than usual during the pandemic that haven’t been classified as COVID deaths. What that also means is that at any given time there are about 19% more people who have COVID-19 than know it, or have at least tested positively for it. The more your know...
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