Focus on statistics related to the pandemic

As a writer for NewsLanded, our founder, Sally Hendrick, has focused on statistics related to the pandemic and the racial equality movement born from it. The following is a quote from one of her articles, which you may read in full here.

"Criticism of the figures showing reported cases and deaths due to COVID-19 is rampant in the media and across social media. How deaths are recorded citing COVID-19 when someone also has diabetes, heart disease, or a respiratory illness is being criticized based on pockets of stories from nurses and doctors across the country. This has sown doubt into the population, especially people with right-leaning political views, as they suspect COVID-19 charting is being politicized. However, numbers don’t lie, and there are ways to validate the pandemic’s effects on expected deaths that can be seen in the excess death graphs."

Excess death charts that debunk that only 6% of deaths are related to COVID-19

Anyone can look up the charts shown here, which are based on expected deaths estimated by actuaries over the last 3+ years. This chart is for the United States as of September 9, 2020. There is a lag in the data due to the time it takes to gather complete information needed for this type of analysis.

Source: CDC website, Weekly number of deaths with and without COVID-19 ending Sep 9, 2020

In the graph above, the entire United States is shown. Typically, only a flu outbreak will cause a piercing of the threshold (the orange line) in the month of January each year. COVID-19 has clearly been the cause of the excess deaths from March to September, as you can see in the blue areas on the far right side of the graph.

If COVID had not been the cause of death in 94% of the excess deaths during this timeframe, then we would have a lot of unexpected deaths to explain in the blue areas of the chart.

Review excess death charts by state

Because the USA is a vast geographic area, and each state has its own political and demographic makeup, charts for New York, Florida, Texas, and Mississippi are shown below.

Video to help explain the graphs

This video explains what some of the graphs looked like in July 2020. The concept of how to read the graph is the same. 

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Sally Hendrick, the founder of Shout Your Cause, has evaluated risks for nearly 30 years as an actuarial consultant. The vast majority of her experience is in evaluating medical costs for liabilities for the healthcare industry. Check out all of Sally's published articles here.