A Really Good Explanation of the CDC Mortality Data Debacle

One of my favorite sources for Covid-19 data and analysis is the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Their colleagues run one of the most popular dashboards for Covid-19 tracking, and their newsletter is a good distillation of what the latest coronavirus data suggests about case, hospitalization, and death trends. Today the team shared a really good explanation of the inaccurate claim that the CDC was misrepresenting data on the deaths from Covid-19. I am sharing it here, and you can check out their work here.

From the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security coronavirus update newsletter:

COVID-19 MORTALITY A number of social media posts, including on Facebook and Twitter, are claiming that the CDC “quietly” corrected its Covid-19 mortality data to remove 94% of the reported deaths. This is factually inaccurate, and we want to provide some quick clarification to correct this misinformation.

The posts refer to provisional Covid-19 mortality data published by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, which states in its August 26 update that 6% of the “deaths involving… Covid-19” have Covid-19 listed as the only cause of death. These data come from death certificates, which may list multiple conditions as causing or contributing to death. These conditions could include those resulting directly from Covid-19 (e.g., respiratory failure) or underlying health conditions that compound the effects of Covid-19 (e.g., heart disease).