­­­The bad news: Over a million Chinese died in the latest Covid wave. The worse news: The US per capita death rate is still 3 times China’s

 

This article in the NY Times tries to answer the question, “How Deadly Was China’s Covid Wave?” This question needs to be asked, since the official number is a ridiculously low 83,150 (for the whole pandemic, although the number before this wave was less than 10,000). Based on four different models, experts estimated that between 970,000 and 1.6 million people died of Covid during the wave (which has now subsided).

Of course, this is bad, but what’s most revealing is a chart comparing some major world countries for their Covid death rates per 100,000 population. China is about in the middle of this list, with either 68 or 110 deaths per 100,000 population (those are based on the low and high estimates of the recent wave, respectively). And which country is at the top? You got it: the US with 337 deaths per 100,000 population, followed closely by Brazil with 330 deaths.

Speaking of US deaths, I just noticed (since I didn’t update my numbers last week) that Covid deaths were about 50% higher in January than they were in December. This doesn’t constitute a huge wave, but it certainly doesn’t indicate that we don’t have to worry about Covid anymore.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, February 12.

Month	Deaths reported during month/year	Avg. deaths per day during month/year	Deaths as percentage of previous month/year
Month of March 2020	4,058	131
Month of April 2020	59,812	1,994	1,474%
Month of May 2020	42,327	1,365	71%
Month of June 2020	23,925	798	57%
Month of July 2020	26,649	860	111%
Month of August 2020	30,970	999	116%
Month of Sept. 2020	22,809	760	75%
Month of Oct. 2020	24,332	785	107%
Month of Nov. 2020	38,293	1,276	157%
Month of Dec. 2020	79,850	2,576	209%
Total 2020	354,215	1,154
Month of Jan. 2021	98,604	3,181	119%
Month of Feb. 2021	68,918	2,461	70%
Month of March 2021	37,945	1,224	55%
Month of April 2021	24,323	811	64%
Month of May 2021	19,843	661	82%
Month of June 2021	10,544	351	53%
Month of July 2021	8,833	287	84%
Month of August 2021	31,160	1,005	351%
Month of Sept. 2021	56,687	1,890	182%
Month of Oct. 2021	49,992	1,613	88%
Month of Nov. 2021	38,364	1,279	77%
Month of Dec. 2021	41,452	1,337	108%
Total 2021	492,756	1,350	158%
Month of Jan. 2022	65,855	2,124	159%
Month of Feb. 2022	63,451	2,266	96%
Month of March 2022	31,427	1,014	50%
Month of April 2022	13,297	443	42%
Month of May 2022	11,474	370	86%
Month of June 2022	11,109	370	97%
Month of July 2022	11,903	384	107%
Month of August 2022	16,199	540	136%
Month of September 2022	13,074	436	81%
Month of October 2022	12,399	400	95%
Month of November 2022	9,221	307	74%
Month of December 2022	11,978	386	130%
Total 2022	271,387	744	-45%
Month of January 2023	17,768	573	148%
Total Pandemic so far	1,140,017	1,079

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday:          1,140,017

Average daily deaths last seven days: 529

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 193

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.3%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 104,766,853          

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 278,016 (39,717/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 127,558 (18,223/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.3% (0.1% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.