I am writing this so that I can easily point people to this information later.

There has been a lot of misinformation posted in the last few days regarding death count "backlogs." This post aims to help clear up the confusion.

A thread.

1/5

You may have seen charts claiming that many deaths reported in the last few days were actually from months ago. Before we go into that, we should talk about data sources.

There are two main data sources at play:

- The CDC
- The States

2/5

The CDC reports deaths that the states have sent to them. These reports are subject to a very large delay as they work their way through the federal bureaucracy.

The states report deaths (and all other information) as soon as they can.

3/5

These are sometimes subject to a short delay - on the order of 1-3 days. See here for an example: https://twitter.com/koko_vivian/status/1282480479539564544

4/5

It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to note that Worldometer, the Covid Tracking Report, 1point3acres, Washington Post, and many other news sites use the *state* data.

That means that these sources are NOT subject to the massive delays that the CDC data has.

5/5

This entire thread has a far better breakdown: https://twitter.com/koko_vivian/status/1282480454663172096

Please reference that as well. My thread is basically a summary of that one.

Correction: In the above thread I said "1-3 days," it is more like 1 week for most of them. See the thread I linked for more detailed information. My mistake.

Addendum: I am responding specifically to this chart: https://twitter.com/kylamb8/status/1281778023935737858

1/2

There is a backfill effect present in the major sources data, but that effect extends from 1-4 weeks, generally on the shorter timescale.

This effect *does not* change the final analysis, which is that deaths are increasing and we need to take strong precautions. 2/2