Josh Marshall was one of the first people to point out this phenomenon of "excess deaths." Simply put, there is an "expected" number of deaths in any given month. Then we have laboratory confirmed Covid-19 tests. Then we have a mysterious number of additional deaths above the average, but not laboratory confirmed as Covid-19. Some of these are definitely directly related to the virus (which we are discovering can kill you in a horrifyingly diverse set of ways), and some are simply the product of either an overwhelmed health care system or people afraid to go to the ER in a timely manner.
Marshall has corralled some of the major stories about this phenomenon, and I think we have enough data points to say this is a very real thing. (We also know other forms of death like car crashes are falling.) If this is true (and it appears it is), then over 120,000 Americans may have lost their lives because of Covid-19. That's more than died in every conflict America has fought in, except the Second World War and the Civil War.
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