More persons are now dying per day from COVID-19 than the number who died, on average per day (2017 data), from Accidents, Chronic lung disease, Stroke, Alzheimer’s, Diabetes, Flu and Pneumonia, Kidney Disease, and Intentional self-harm put together: 2535 versus 2289. That’s the bottom 8 causes of death from the top ten causes.
In less than one week from today (4/17/2020 Friday), the U.S. will have more deaths from COVID-19 so far this year than the usual yearly number of deaths from suicide (47,000 per year). That will make Covid19 the #10th leading cause of death for 2020 so far.
Important: At the current rate, it looks like we’ll have over one million Covid-19 cases and 86,000 deaths by the end of April, then well over 2 million cases and 200,000 to 250,000 deaths total by the end of May.
2017 Yearly Stats (CDC Fast Stats)
Number of deaths: 2,813,503
#1 Heart disease: 647,457
#2 Cancer: 599,108
#3 Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
#4 Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
#5 Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
#6 Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
#7 Diabetes: 83,564
#8 Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,672
#9 Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 50,633
#10 Total Deaths from COVID-19 so far: 48,868 (4/23/20)
#11 Intentional self-harm: 47,173
2017 Calculated Daily Stats
2017 Average daily deaths, all causes: 7708
Subtotal of heart disease and cancer: 3415
4/17/2020 COVID deaths: 2535
Heart disease: 1774
Cancer: 1641
Accidents: 466
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 439
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 401
Alzheimer’s disease: 333
Diabetes: 229
Influenza and Pneumonia: 153
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 139
Intentional self-harm: 129
First, I copied the yearly numbers, for 2017, from the CDC. Then I calculated the daily value, which is merely the yearly number divided by the 365 days of 2017. (Yes, 2020 has 366 days.) Today, according to worldometers, we had 1919 deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19. That exceeds the daily number for heart disease (1774) and for cancer (1641) from 2017, and almost certainly for this year also.
In addition, consider that some persons dying from COVID-19, particularly the elderly, will now not die from the other causes. So the values for other types of causes of death will go down for 2020, and COVID-19 will go up. The total deaths in the U.S. from Covid so far have been 12,790, which is 130 per day if you begin at January 1st (because this is an average per day for the year calculation). That just makes the bottom of the chart for daily deaths, and we are only in April.
Note 1: So a doctor did a similar analysis, with a graph: Watch it here. Note that her data is from CDC final data for 2017, not 2018.
Note 2: So this CNN article says that COVID-19 is not the leading cause of death in the U.S. Yes, by yearly totals, that is correct; it is not. But the data on daily average of cancer deaths and of heart disease deaths from other years is LOWER than the current daily deaths from COVID-19. And that is the fact discussed below.
Ronald L. Conte Jr.
the reproach of Christ 
This is of course assuming that all “COVID-related” deaths are genuinely related to COVID-19. There has been much speculation that many of these deaths aren’t actually caused by COVID-19. The CDC has issued guidance to hospitals to list deaths as COVID-19 related regardless of whether any testing has been done to confirm COVID was the primary cause. This has the potential to greatly inflate the fatality rate of this virus.
No, I don’t think so. COVID-19 is a very unusual syndrome, which is not likely to be mistaken for anything else, other than SARS or MERS.
Michael..you are correct.. if a patient has COVID and then dies from a heart attack, and post mortem they determine he has COVID then the official cause of death is COVID..further if you look at the deaths caused by pneumonia graphed per week for all the past 5 years there is a 50% reduction of death by pneumonia in the year 2020
You might want to address this video, since he addresses you by name.
He called my attention to the video on Twitter. I don’t want to get into another debate on that topic right now. I have two books on the subject at Amazon and a number of articles (at Catechism.cc).
An article on closing Churches at Easter:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/a_response_to_the_lockdown_of_churches_during_easter.html
Yet another article on closing Churches:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/have-you-noticed-how-much-delight-they-are-taking-in-shutting-down-churches-all-over-the-united-states
Ron what do you make of Trump encouraging Right wing protestors to demand an end to the lockdown in several states he is playing a reckless and dangerous game with peoples lives by encouraging these fanatics to defy the law if they become infected at the protests the risk infecting other innocent people.
I don’t think that’s an accurate description of what he is doing. Trump seems to be relying heavily on experts and well-qualified advisors. If the nation doesn’t open up, the economy could become a depression, and then you would have many more deaths from disease due to malnutrition and other stressors. So it’s a lose-lose scenario. We aren’t safe if we just all stay in our homes. That is just a slower path to destruction.
We need to identify the best treatment, which will be a set of inhibitors, interferon, and possibly convalescent sera or manufactured antibodies. Once we have that, we can slowly open up.
You left out Abortion and contraceptive related deaths.
I have an older post on that topic. I used govt data for this post, that’s why it doesn’t list abortion and contraception.
https://ronconte.com/2012/03/13/abortion-is-the-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-u-s/
https://ronconte.com/2018/07/23/more-prenatals-are-killed-by-abortifacients-than-by-abortion/