Covid-19: The 3rd Leading Cause of Death and Other Hard Data

A sober look at the numbers

Amid rapidly worsening Covid-19 outbreaks across America and a pandemic of politicization, polarization, and fatigue, I’m taking a brief time-out on analysis and expert scientific commentary to just look at some hard data.

Covid-19 is the number three cause of death in the United States this year, based on the numbers already logged. Barring any upside surprise, it will likely end up in that third slot, behind heart disease and cancer, whose numbers don’t change much from year to year. Already the coronavirus pandemic has killed twice as many Americans as the 1957–58 flu pandemic, whose death toll of 116,000 was the worst since 1918.

The number of new Covid-19 cases in the United States is now at a record level, averaging more than 80,000 per day and accelerating upward. Hospitalizations are surging across the country, and deaths are ticking back up. Based on the latest seven-day averages:

• Every second, another American is diagnosed with Covid-19.
• Every 42 seconds, another American is hospitalized for Covid-19.
• Every two minutes, an American dies of Covid-19.