COVID-19 deaths are on the rise
As cases surge, mortality rate used as political fodder
Coronavirus infections soared thisweek to record levels, hospitalizations are up in almost every state, and now— predictably, but slowly — deaths are rising, too.
The nation passed another milestone Friday with 9 million confirmed cases since the start of the pandemic, including more than 98,000 new cases, a daily record. More than1,000 deaths in theUnited States fromthe novel coronavirus were reported each day Wednesday and Thursday, according to health data analyzed by the Washington Post, continuing an upward trend that began two weeks ago.
All signs indicate that this isn’t a blip but rather a reflection of a massive surge in infections that, without a dramatic effort to reverse the trend, will drive up the death toll for weeks to come. At least 229,000
people in the United States have died of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
But the mortality numbers have become political fodder on the campaign trail. Depending on whom you listen to, the coronavirus just isn’t that deadly anymore. Or it’s killing people in droves.
The truth is that mortality rates have improved, but the accelerating spread of the virus is driving up the absolute numbers of deaths.
Doctors have reported better outcomes thanks to improved techniques for treating patients and the use of the steroid dexamethasone and the antiviral remdesivir. In a widely reported study, researchers at NYU Langone Health found that the death rate among more than 5,000 patients in the system’s three hospitals dropped from 25.6 percent in March to 7.6 percent in August.
Still, this remains a potentially deadly disease, and a large proportion of the population is still vulnerable to infection. With the number of infections hitting daily records, there is reason to expect that deaths will keep rising until the spread of the virus is contained.
Deaths lag infections by many weeks. In hard-hit North Dakota, daily infections have doubled since the end of September, while the average number of deaths from COVID-19 is up 50 percent. In
Indiana, cases are up 150 percent in that time, and deaths are up 93 percent.
In Wisconsin, cases began spiking in early September, and deaths began to rise sharply at the end of the month. Of the 2,029 deaths there from the pandemic, more than half have occurred since Sept. 25.
Incomplete data
President Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. have in recent days said there has been an excessive focus on infections rather than deaths, which have not risen as quickly and remain lower than in the early days of the pandemic.
“Do you ever notice, they don’t use the word‘ death’? They use the word ‘cases,’ ” the president said Tuesday in Omaha. He brought up his 14-year-old son. “Like, Barron Trump is a case. He has sniffles, he was sniffling. One Kleenex, that’s all he needed, and he was better. But he’s a case.”
The younger Trump posted a graph on his Instagram account, based on incomplete Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, that he claimed showed deaths dropping.
“Why isn’t the ACTUAL data from the CDC being discussed? … (W)hile there have been increases in new cases per week, there has actually been a steady decrease in deaths per week,” Trump Jr. wrote. He echoed that argument in a television interview Thursday on Fox News, saying he asked himself why people weren’t talking about deaths, and deciding, “Oh, because the number is almost nothing. Because we’ve gotten control of this thing, we understand how it works.”
His description of the CDC death data is misleading. CDC official Robert Anderson, head of the agency’s mortality data branch, did not comment for this article but pointed to the CDC document that explains the most recent death data is incomplete.
“It is important to note that it can take several weeks for death records to be submitted to National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), processed, coded, and tabulated. Therefore, the data show non this page may be incomplete, and will likely not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period, especially for the more recent time periods.”
Former Vice President Joe Biden, by contrast, emphasizes the death toll in his speeches. In a short address Wednesday in Wilmington, Del., he
spoke of “the refusal of the Trump administration to recognize the reality we’re living through at a time when almost 1,000 Americans a day are dying,” and said that refusal “is an insult to every single person suffering from COVID-19 and every family who’s lost a loved one.”
White House spokesman Judd Deere said any suggestion that Trump hasn’t taken the threat of the virus seriously “is completely false.”
“Thanks to the bold actions of President Trump, the risks today are dramatically lower than they were only a few months ago with mortality rates falling over 80 percent,” he said.
Nationally, the daily death toll from the virus remains well below the numbers seen during the initial spring wave of the pandemic, when more than 2,200 people were dying each day on average. That declined until early July. But then a surge of infections in May and June, particularly in the Sun Belt and reflecting the end of many shutdowns and restrictions, began once again driving up the death toll.
The number dipped again in September but has risen steadily this month along with the arrival of colder weather and the accelerating spread of the virus. Since Oct. 22, 13 states have reached their all-time high for average daily deaths: Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Death toll can’t be predicted
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, noted that while improved treatments have lowered mortality among the severely ill, there is no way to predict accurately what the death toll will be, he said.
“I would expect that as more people get infected, and more people get into the hospital, we will have an increase in deaths. It is impossible to predict what the level of deaths will be related to the number of hospitalizations,” Fauci said.
He and others have warned that widespread transmission of the virus among young people will lead to dangerous cases among the more vulnerable members of society— the elderly and people with chronic health conditions. The virus incubates for up to 14 days and the spread can be subtle and slow.
“One 20-year-old infects another 20-year-old who infects another 20-year-old who infects Grandma. So you have eight to 10 weeks,” Fauci said.
Experts said they believe the virus is spreading primarily in small, indoor gatherings, including inside bars and restaurants. Colder weather and the return of students to college campuses are also likely factors. Wisconsin, like many places in the United States far from the coasts, went largely unscathed in earlier waves of the pandemic. Those interior states are now flooded with cases.
Even so, someof the hardest-hit states have the lowest rates of mask-wearing.
“The current mindset appears to be, at least, that people have said, ‘Well, it is what it is,’ ” said Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics. “But it can’t really continue like this because health systems will soon have to come to a point where they may have to make very difficult decisions about COVID care versus care for patients who don’t have COVID but still need it.”