"Unfortunately, weekly and monthly data can be confusing, particularly if delays in reporting cloud the picture. Some have taken advantage by comparing figures for part of 2020 with the whole of previous years.
"The release of figures covering an entire year, broken down both by state and cause of death, provide an ideal opportunity to take stock.
"These are now published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Total US deaths for 2020 were 3,358,814, an increase of 503,976 on 2019, which itself was marginally up on previous years. Proportionally more died in the Civil War years and the 1918/19 flu, but in absolute numbers, no previous year came close."
So, wait--I thought several LRCers were saying that the people who died of Covid-19 in 2020 would have died last year anyway, because they already had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. So is it *this* year that those extra half-million or so would have died? Which means we can look for 2021 to end with about a half-million *fewer* deaths than would ordinarily be expected?