I don’t know if what is mentioned in this article is true:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/team-trump-pushes-cdc-to-dial-down-covid-death-counts
but if it is, I have completely lost respect for Dr. Deborah Brix (not that I had much before considering her appearances on Fox news defending the indefensible – like Trump’s “musings” about bleach and UV light).
The question of how many deaths we have from Covid 19 is something that can be addressed by a mathematician’s “first cousin”, the actuary using their concept of “excess deaths”. (Excess deaths are typically defined as “the difference between observed numbers of deaths and the expected number of deaths” – simple subtraction.) Actuaries have spent a long time understanding “expected” death rates because life insurance companies would go out of business without this information and so excess deaths are something they think long and hard about. There is absolutely no question the United States has had an unbelievable number of “excess deaths” since the virus hit us. All I had to do was read this: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm.
While it isn’t for a mathematician to say that these excess deaths are only caused by Covid 19, common sense says, what other explanation is there? Car accidents are down for example…. I conclude the (mathematical) evidence strongly suggests the number of reported deaths is lower than the actual number of deaths caused by this horrid virus.
Sheesh