Another day of plague, another day of plague data.

I spent all night last night collating old monthly mortality statistics for the United States. Here's % change in monthly deaths vs 1 year earlier for every month of US mortality since complete records began in 1937.

I've marked what the April 2020 death spike will likely look like if total COVID deaths (not just April) come in at the amounts given and April is the peak.

Even at just 75,000 deaths total COVID deaths, COVID will be one of the largest death spikes on record.

At 100,000, it's #3. By about 120,000 you're talking about a death spike on a scale we've never recorded with modern U.S. vital statistics.

To get something comparable, you have to reach back further. Before 1937 we have incomplete vital stats from a limited set of states, but we can use it to guess what nationwide mortality may have been like.

So if we do extend the series, we see that even a 300k COVID death scenario is second only to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.

At 200k, the only rival datapoints are the 1929 flu season which was horrible and awful and it's so weird we don't talk about how bad the 1928-29 flu season was, and the 3rd wave of Spanish flu.

Which is to say, we cannot yet rule out the possibility that COVID will become the 2nd worst pandemic event ever to be observed in modern recordkeeping.

Also let me repeat again that getting this series required me to trudge through dozens of different files. CDC should just make this an easy download, but, alas.

Also we should talk more about the 1929 flu pandemic.

I have two more business items before I go on to my regular charts.

First of all, I did a podcast ( @JonahRemnant ) about COVID with @JonahDispatch . He asked good questions; give it a listen! https://remnant.thedispatch.com/p/forget-it-lyman-its-china-258

And finally, check out @JDVance1 's excellent thread on coronatruthers. I learned a lot from it. https://twitter.com/JDVance1/status/1247727105867210756