1/ We are mass PCR testing for CV & recording everyone who dies within 30 days as a CV death

If we constantly PCR tested everyone for the common cold & applied the same death recording policy there might be 583,000 to 1,400,000+ US common cold deaths every year, as shown below

2/ The two key factors in estimating this are how many common colds does each person have each year and how long do they test positive for them using PCR testing.

Per the CDC “Adults have an average of 2-3 colds per year, and children have even more” https://www.cdc.gov/features/rhinoviruses/index.html

3/ And per the below study of people testing positive with PCR tests even though they had cleared the virus “the virus’s RNA has in these cells can be detected in PCR tests even 1 or 2 mo after the virus has been eliminated” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7298089/

4/ In addition to this 1 to 2 months of PCR detectability needs to be added the actual time of infection before it is cleared, common estimated as ~2 weeks, plus the time after testing positive that a person is officially recorded as dying from it (30 days).

5/ Adding these amounts together gives a 2.5 to 3.5 month time window for being considered a common cold death, using the same death cause policy that is being applied to CV.

6/ If we estimate very conservatively that each person gets only 1 common cold annually & the window to be classified as a common cold death is on the low end of the scale at 2.5 months.

7/ It would mean on average 21% (2.5 months / 12 months) of the population at any time would be classified as a common cold death if they died.

8/ Which means that 21% of the deaths each year would be classified as being from the common cold if we continually tested everyone & applied the same cause of death policy which is applied to CV. And with 2.8 million US deaths a year that would mean 583k common cold deaths.

9/ Moving more to the middle of the range of the estimates & assuming 2 common colds a year per person & a 3 month common cold death recording window, would mean that each person 6 months of the year would be considered as dying from the common cold if they were to die.

10/ Which would amount to 1.4 million (6 months / 12 months * 2.8 million annual deaths) US common cold deaths a year using the CV cause of death policy.

And remember this number is only for the common cold and does not include the flu.