This is a reprint Published from 2020.
(And I’ve seen a lot of horrible analysis) [Update 8/14/2020: the author has taken down the post, but here is an archived 8/13/2020 version of the webpage]
reader Bruce Hall recommend connected to this article It asserts that the number of deaths in 2020 is not unusual. In fact, this is the 20th year in the past 21 years!
Now, Ms. Colleen Huber, NMD*** has come to this conclusion:
As of this writing, 32 weeks have passed in 2020. However, for the previous year, 52 weeks have passed. So how do we compare all-cause deaths in 2020 to previous years?
I divided the total number of deaths per year by the number of weeks. This is 52 weeks in all years except 2020, where 32 weeks have elapsed as of last Saturday, August 8, 2020, which is the most recent week in the CDC data cited. This gives us the average weekly deaths in those years and allows for meaningful comparisons between 2020 and previous years.
Then she generates the following table:
She concluded:
There does not appear to be a pandemic of COVID-19 or any other disease in 2020, at least not in the United States.
Ms. Huber told us that there are 52 weeks in a year, which is great. She divided the 2020 data by the 32 weeks that the CDC has recorded (though reporting in recent weeks has been very incomplete).
This would be a sensible approach – calculating the weekly mortality rate – If there is no seasonality in the data. However, death Yes It’s seasonal in the US, as easily seen in the CDC data she’s analyzing.
figure 1: CDC data accessed Aug. 7, 2020.
As we enter the second half of the year, the death toll usually goes up (flu, etc). So using the 32 weeks of 2020 and the full 52 weeks of previous years often yields a meaningless comparison. (There is a standard method that is used in many economics publications—year-to-date counts. That is, Ms. Huber can compare the number of deaths in the first 32 weeks of each year for the past 20 years to the number of deaths in the previous 32 weeks. This year. )
Again, the most embarrassingly stupid data analysis I’ve seen this year (perhaps this decade, although the competition is fierce).
I use the CDC’s estimates of expected deaths to investigate, here.
*** “NMD” means “Naturopathic Doctor”
