Well hello again! Paid work delayed this post for a little bit, so I’m interested to see after 7 weeks where we’re going to land. Last time I posted we had just gone over 1 million excess deaths since 2/1/20, and as of this week we are just under 1.1 million. Hopefully things are settling down now, and I’ll be interested to see where the 2021 numbers are as well. I’m also going to throw in an extra bit about official COVID deaths vs excess mortality, as my state made some major adjustments to the official numbers this month.

Ready? Let’s go!

Excess Mortality Above Average

First up, the map. When I posted 7 weeks ago, the range at the bottom was 881-5245 deaths/million residents. Now it’s 1020-5729 deaths/million. The top states continue to rise faster than the bottom ones. It’s amazing to think that in the top states one out of every 200 people who was alive at the beginning of the pandemic is now an excess death. As always, that’s in addition to those expected to die anyway.

I was surprised to see West Virginia suddenly sticking out more than previously, and was curious to see how that showed up in the numbers. The difference was pretty clear:

State	Excess Deaths Above Average 2/1/20-3/23/22	Change from 2/2/22	Change in Rank
Mississippi	5729	+484	No change
Arizona	4948	+328	No change
Alabama	4768	+463	No change
West Virginia	4710	+1081	+6
New Mexico	4642	+455	-1
Tennessee	4400	+454	+1
Arkansas	4363	+390	-2
Louisiana	4269	+299	-2
South Carolina	4202	+833	+10
Montana	4172	+293	-2

West Virginia and South Carolina had a lousy winter it appears. They were the two states that gained the most excess deaths in the last 7 weeks. Here are the rest of the top 10:

State	3/23/22 Excess	2/2/22 Excess	Difference	Mar Rank	Feb Rank
West Virginia	4710	3629	1081	4	10
South Carolina	4202	3369	833	9	19
North Carolina	2556	2027	529	42	45
Oklahoma	4077	3575	502	12	11
Kentucky	3971	3480	491	13	15
Mississippi	5729	5245	484	1	1
Alabama	4768	4305	463	3	3
New Mexico	4642	4187	455	5	4
Tennessee	4400	3946	454	6	7
Rhode Island	3033	2593	440	31	34

Looking back at my old post, I had noted that West Virginia reporting had been quite sparse since Thanksgiving 2021, so it’s likely some of that jump is them catching up with deaths they should have filed much earlier. Let’s see if that shows up in the 2021 totals.

Percent Excess Mortality – 2020 and 2021

Looks like some of them did! North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia added 10+ percentage points to their 2021 excess mortality total since 7 weeks ago. Seems like a data dump. Again, the asterisked states added 2% or more to their total, and the ones highlighted in green are in the top 10.

State	2020 deaths – actual	2020 deaths – expected	Percent Increase 2020	2021 deaths – reported	2021 deaths – expected	Percent Increase 2021
Alabama	62550	54731	14%	67387	55022	22%
Alaska	4971	4434	12%	5996	4574	31%*
Arizona	75955	64271	18%	82437	63789	29%
Arkansas	37432	33452	12%	39979	33472	19%
California	315430	282704	12%	336042	274992	22%
Colorado	47161	41404	14%	48780	41279	18%
Connecticut	37730	32422	16%	34404	32884	5%*
Delaware	10862	10067	8%	11263	10117	11%
District of Columbia	7378	6881	7%	7116	6369	12%
Florida	240765	218159	10%	264692	219282	21%
Georgia	102464	88601	16%	112058	89429	25%
Hawaii	11990	11918	1%	12825	12352	4%
Idaho	16340	15131	8%	18298	15196	20%
Illinois	127440	108670	17%	120570	108118	12%
Indiana	78293	69227	13%	79056	68943	15%
Iowa	35418	31004	14%	33763	31542	7%
Kansas	30773	26895	14%	30960	27472	13%
Kentucky	55145	50678	9%	60046	50066	20%
Louisiana	56320	47296	19%	57085	48014	19%
Maine	15504	14990	3%	17044	15430	10%
Maryland	59048	52747	12%	57353	53122	8%
Massachusetts	68390	60979	12%	63725	62238	2%
Michigan	114510	98954	16%	115364	100018	15%
Minnesota	51732	46104	12%	51101	47016	9%
Mississippi	38825	32248	20%	40303	32460	24%
Missouri	75514	66833	13%	76225	67972	12%
Montana	11903	10533	13%	12771	10458	22%
Nebraska	19547	17215	14%	19034	17876	6%
Nevada	31006	28192	10%	33958	27462	24%
New Hampshire	13435	13115	2%	13766	13339	3%
New Jersey	94621	76824	23%	83181	78212	6%
New Mexico	22842	19254	19%	24238	19611	24%*
New York	118274	101635	16%	115802	103080	12%
New York City	81660	54889	49%	63113	55568	14%
North Carolina	108916	99853	9%	112026	100382	12%*
North Dakota	8793	7214	22%	7464	7566	-1%
Ohio	142211	130067	9%	146997	129444	14%
Oklahoma	45814	40777	12%	49083	41076	19%
Oregon	39947	37412	7%	44758	37387	20%
Pennsylvania	154622	140393	10%	155651	138546	12%
Puerto Rico	32056	30482	5%	32959	30526	8%
Rhode Island	12054	10439	15%	11566	10926	6%
South Carolina	59676	51517	16%	64215	52711	22%*
South Dakota	10052	8398	20%	9348	8489	10%
Tennessee	87418	78021	12%	95112	79012	20%
Texas	250917	212205	18%	271402	214961	26%
United States	3353789	2943069	14%	3454320	2955004	17%
Utah	22027	19974	10%	23414	20023	17%
Vermont	6116	5861	4%	6617	5741	15%
Virginia	78680	71488	10%	84412	72760	16%
Washington	62558	59323	5%	68359	60032	14%
West Virginia	25323	23028	10%	27713	23629	17%*
Wisconsin	61940	54672	13%	60498	55573	9%
Wyoming	5497	4386	25%	5950	4921	21%

Now one more analysis before we go!

Excess Mortality vs Official COVID deaths and Vaccination Rates

So on this blog, we’ve been talking strictly about excess mortality. I started using this metric because I found the discrepancies between state death definitions a bit annoying. Two weeks ago, I heard that Massachusetts was revising their official COVID death count downward by about 3,700. Massachusetts had long been one of the states that appeared to be overcounting COVID deaths, so I was not concerned about this change. While MA has been hanging out in the bottom 5 for excess mortality for months, in terms of official COVID deaths they had been top 10-15 for 2 years now. With this change our official count has dropped to #32, much more in line with the likely true count. I decided to do a quick correlation between states to see how excess mortality lined up with official COVID death counts. The correlation is a stunning r = .83 between reported COVID deaths and excess mortality. Massachusetts highlighted in yellow, suggesting even with the reduction we are still slightly over counting:

That outlier of undercounting is Vermont btw, not sure what they’re up to.

So then, since this question comes up a lot, I decided to do a correlation between vaccine uptake by state and excess mortality since 2/1/20. Even with no vaccines in 2020, we still see a moderately strong negative correlation r = -.65. In general something is called strong at r = .7 or .75:

Stay safe out there!