Will we be able to estimate the real number of C19 deaths?

[rgG]

I do not believe the numbers reported for C19 deaths are anywhere close to the real number.
The US and Europe are probably the least under reported, In places like South America and India I can’t believe they are not many times as high.
Will some organization be able to show what normal deaths for the past year should be and then subtract that from total deaths this year, or will those total death numbers also be just as flawed?

[hal]

statisticians can look at the total number of deaths from all causes over time and likely deduce a closer approximation to the real number of deaths.

Looks like there were about 500,000 more deaths than avg in 2020. Something like 360,000 were caused officially by covid.

I posted this earlier:

Deaths in the USA:

2403351 2000
2416425 2001
2443387 2002
2448288 2003
2397615 2004
2448017 2005
2426264 2006
2423712 2007
2471984 2008
2437163 2009
2468435 2010
2515458 2011
2543279 2012
2596993 2013
2626418 2014
2712630 2015
2744248 2016
2813503 2017
2839205 2018
2854838 2019
3358814 2020 est

all #s from the CDC

[JoeH]

By the time statisticians and demographers look through the mortality numbers over the next few years, they will have an estimate that will in high probability be with 1 or 2% of the actual number of deaths due to COVID-19.

[mrbigstuff]

What Hal wrote.

[rgG]

It will be interesting.

[RgrF]

JoeH wrote:
By the time statisticians and demographers look through the mortality numbers over the next few years, they will have an estimate that will in high probability be with 1 or 2% of the actual number of deaths due to COVID-19.

That's pretty trusting. if we can't get non-politicized numbers from places like Florida, what should we expect from Asia or Africa?

This is a pandemic that political leaders will bury faster than a dog with a favourite bone.

[JoeH]

RgrF wrote:
[quote=JoeH]
By the time statisticians and demographers look through the mortality numbers over the next few years, they will have an estimate that will in high probability be with 1 or 2% of the actual number of deaths due to COVID-19.

That's pretty trusting. if we can't get non-politicized numbers from places like Florida, what should we expect from Asia or Africa?

This is a pandemic that political leaders will bury faster than a dog with a favourite bone.
They won't be needing the numbers from places like Florida that has politicized their statistics. As the numbers that were quoted from the CDC show, there was an increase from the trend line for the previous years of about 500,000 more deaths in 2020 than were to be expected. The death certificates still need to be filed, even if they list an inaccurate cause.

What the statisticians will end up doing is accounting for deaths due to known non-disease causes such as accidents. They will have trend lines and other information that can be used to adjust the numbers, At the end of it there will be a pool of unaccounted for deaths, again how many were due to COVID-19 can be estimated even if they do not have tests. At the end of the process the number will not be exact, but they will be able to say with better than 95% confidence that the death toll from this disease was at least some minimum number up to a maximum.