How official death data underestimate COVID-19’s inequities

January 8, 2023.Reading time 7 minutes.

In the last week of December, I had a major story published at MuckRock, USA TODAY, and local newsrooms in Arizona, Oregon, and Texas. The story explains that official COVID-19 statistics underestimate the pandemic’s true toll—particularly on people of color, who are more likely to have their deaths inaccurately represented in mortality data.

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The “one million deaths” milestone fails to capture the pandemic’s true toll

May 8, 2022.Reading time 13 minutes.

This week, many headlines declared that the U.S. has reached one million COVID-19 deaths. While a major milestone, this number is actually far below the full impact of the pandemic; looking at excess deaths and demographic breakdowns allows us to get closer.

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New CDC mortality data release from the Documenting COVID-19 project

April 10, 2022.Reading time 6 minutes.

The Documenting COVID-19 project recently released a GitHub data repository that provides county-level CDC mortality data from 2020 and 2021. We’re hoping other reporters will use it to investigate deaths during the pandemic in their regions.

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New CDC mortality data: “Real-time public health surveillance at a highly granular level”

December 12, 2021.Reading time 28 minutes.

This past Monday, the CDC put out a major data release: mortality data for 2020 and 2021, encompassing the pandemic’s impact on deaths from all causes in the U.S. The new data allow researchers and reporters to investigate excess deaths, a measure of the pandemic’s true toll—comparing the number of deaths that occurred in a particular region, during a particular year, to deaths that would’ve been expected had COVID-19 not occurred. At the same time, the new data allow for investigations into COVID-19 disparities and increased deaths of non-COVID causes during the pandemic.

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