1/ Excess deaths in the time of Covid. A thread. Earlier today I saw and retweeted someone saying that States were hiding Covid deaths by misclassifying them as pneumonia deaths. This seemed like a plausible accusation, but it was immediately challenged by someone.

2/ helpfully they provided a link to the http://data.cdc.gov  site, which anyone can use to download the data as a csv file. https://twitter.com/mutedestro/status/1265749079411306496?s=21

3/ so, I downloaded the spreadsheet for 2019 and 2020, and started noodling around, quickly confirming that States are not hiding Covid deaths under pneumonia. But some of them are hiding deaths under “Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical findings, not elsewhere classified”

4/ This is the graph of the bad actors for 2020. Up to 300 people a week dying from “unknown causes”. Is this typical?

5/ Ha! no it is not. Deaths from unknown causes is typically a fairly small and stable bucket, except for Florida. The most interesting part of this chart is the small upward trend in Texas and Florida in early December of 2019, a month before the first “detected” case.

So, here’s the rogues gallery, the States hiding their true numbers in the “unknown deaths” bucket. Texas. The true Covid case count is double what the State admits to.

7/ South Carolina. Again, twice the deaths, half labeled “unknown.

8/ Tennessee. Covid deaths halved from 50 to 20, while “unknown” deaths climbed from 60 tp 120. Nothing to see here folks, just move along.

9/ Ohio. Half the Covid deaths are just random unexplained deaths.

10/ Arizona. Another State shifting deaths from covid to unknown to make it look like they’re past the peak.

11/ And now two counter-examples. Georgia. They had Covid. They didn’t try to hide it.

12/ Indiana.

13/ 50 States (plus territories) send their mortality data to the CDC. 7 States have had a mysterious rise in unclassifiable deaths that roughly parallels the spread of Covid in the United States. 10% of the States lying to their people about the scope of their problem.

14/ missed two of the bad guys. Colorado. Not quite as bad as others early, but the unknowns are rising to meet the Covid deaths.

15/ and, last but not least, Florida. Just 300 people a week dying. No reason.