Well hello again! Apparently I’m just falling behind all over the place with this. An update a month was a nice aspiration, but not one I’m managing. Moving on! Last time I posted we were just under 1.1 million excess deaths since 2/1/20, and as of 6/1, we are at 1.125 million. That actually seems….pretty good comparatively? I only have the numbers from 6/1 because the CDC is doing some sort of work on their database and won’t have updated numbers until next week. We’ll see when I get around to looking at those.

Alright, on with what we have!

Excess Mortality Above Average

First up, the map. When I posted on 3/23, the range at the bottom was 1020-5729 deaths/million residents. Now it’s 1047-5823 deaths/million. For a 10 week gap that is….not a bad change. Certainly better than we’ve seen since I’ve been doing this. So where are the bad states?

State	Excess Deaths Above Average 2/1/20-6/1/22	Change from 3/23/22	Change in Rank
Mississippi	5823	+94	No change
West Virginia	5622	+912	+2
Arizona	5153	+205	+1
New Mexico	4848	+206	+1
Alabama	4841	+73	-2
Louisiana	4506	+237	+2
Tennessee	4480	+80	+1
Arkansas	4467	+104	-1
Wyoming	4353	+186	+2
South Carolina	4287	+85	-1

Wow…so that was a jump. They jumped last time as well, so they are moving quite rapidly. What other big movers were there?

State	6/1/22 Excess	3/23/22 Excess	Change	June Rank	March Rank
West Virginia	5622	4710	912	2	4
North Carolina	3369	2556	813	24	42
Puerto Rico	1972	1407	565	48	51
Alaska	3208	2927	281	28	34
Louisiana	4506	4269	237	6	8
New Mexico	4848	4642	206	4	5
Arizona	5153	4948	205	3	2
Oklahoma	4267	4077	190	11	12
Wyoming	4353	4167	186	9	11
Kentucky	4155	3971	184	13	13

Interesting, so West Virginia and North Carolina are our two big jumpers here. I’m not clear why that is, but it’s worth noting that North Carolina had been outperforming it’s neighbors for quite some time, and is still outperforming them now. Peurto Rico was also doing very well and it’s jump has it doing only slightly less well.

It’s also worth noting that 9 states lost excess deaths in the last 10 weeks. We had wondered if we were going to see this effect start to happen, as this is something that could occur if some of the people who died initially were those who were close to death already. These states were: Rhode Island (-205), Ohio (-72), Maryland (-62), New Jersey (-52), Massachusetts (-34), Michigan (-31), Illinois (-20), Idaho (-19) and Pennsylvania (-17).

It will be interesting to see if more states start to slip backward as the summer goes on.

Percent Excess Mortality – 2020 and 2021

Alright, so hopefully most states are done updating their numbers from 2020 and 2021 by this point right? Who’s still at it? Well, really only Alaska (+2%), North Carolina (+7%), North Dakota (+8%) and West Virginia (+4%). All other states have very small changes or no change in the last 10 weeks. Top 10 states for each year are highlighted and bolded below, though 2021 had a 3 way tie for 10th so there are actually 12 states there.

State	2020 deaths – expected	2020 deaths – actual	% change	2021 deaths – expected	2021 deaths – actual	% change
Alabama	54839	62550	14%	55036	67508	23%
Alaska	4462	4971	11%	4552	6037	33%
Arizona	62622	75955	21%	63797	82520	29%
Arkansas	33424	37432	12%	33406	40015	20%
California	284264	315430	11%	275238	336534	22%
Colorado	41621	47161	13%	41289	48912	18%
Connecticut	32416	37730	16%	32910	34479	5%
Delaware	10016	10862	8%	10247	11295	10%
District of Columbia	6959	7378	6%	6495	7130	10%
Florida	213923	240765	13%	219931	264812	20%
Georgia	87875	102464	17%	89319	112573	26%
Hawaii	11893	11990	1%	12343	12839	4%
Idaho	15138	16340	8%	15282	18299	20%
Illinois	108823	127440	17%	108444	120592	11%
Indiana	69474	78293	13%	69171	79198	14%
Iowa	30946	35418	14%	31547	33809	7%
Kansas	26882	30773	14%	27392	30975	13%
Kentucky	50994	55145	8%	50136	60206	20%
Louisiana	47208	56320	19%	48057	57469	20%
Maine	15070	15504	3%	15347	17045	11%
Maryland	53119	59048	11%	53311	57396	8%
Massachusetts	61009	68390	12%	62383	63748	2%
Michigan	98748	114510	16%	100176	115524	15%
Minnesota	46084	51732	12%	47005	51225	9%
Mississippi	32284	38825	20%	32315	40348	25%
Missouri	66643	75514	13%	68207	76413	12%
Montana	10651	11903	12%	10400	12771	23%
Nebraska	17173	19547	14%	17863	19052	7%
Nevada	28547	31006	9%	27546	33974	23%
New Hampshire	13127	13435	2%	13464	13775	2%
New Jersey	76686	94621	23%	78694	83497	6%
New Mexico	19180	22842	19%	19616	24433	25%
New York	101705	118274	16%	103179	115838	12%
New York City	54870	81660	49%	55622	63259	14%
North Carolina	99977	108916	9%	100298	118893	19%
North Dakota	7233	8793	22%	7508	8065	7%
Ohio	130487	142211	9%	130056	147109	13%
Oklahoma	40731	45814	12%	41086	49214	20%
Oregon	37707	39947	6%	37171	44825	21%
Pennsylvania	140989	154622	10%	139294	156273	12%
Puerto Rico	30574	32056	5%	30695	33090	8%
Rhode Island	10399	12054	16%	10877	11598	7%
South Carolina	51380	59676	16%	52784	64260	22%
South Dakota	8456	10052	19%	8447	9362	11%
Tennessee	78370	87418	12%	78956	95155	21%
Texas	212670	250917	18%	214835	271773	27%
United States	2956302	3353789	13%	2958796	3468553	17%
Utah	20042	22027	10%	20069	23454	17%
Vermont	5853	6116	4%	5791	6617	14%
Virginia	71636	78680	10%	72781	84878	17%
Washington	59364	62558	5%	59889	68415	14%
West Virginia	23033	25323	10%	23605	28679	21%
Wisconsin	54583	61940	13%	55622	60532	9%
Wyoming	4324	5497	27%	4867	5951	22%

So there we go! The good news is things actually do look to be finally slowing down quite substantially in most places. A few states still look to be struggling, though at this point it’s unclear what’s driving that.

As always, add any questions in the comments or shoot me a message!