The CDC uses two grossly contradictory numbers of annual deaths from pneumonia and influenza: about 55,000 in the annual leading causes of the death report and about 188,000 in National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) data used on the FluView web site to report the percentage of deaths each week due to pneumonia and influenza. These differ by a factor of OVER THREE. The larger FluView number is comparable to the current cumulative total COVID-19 deaths in the United States (Aug 30, 2020).
Since it is generally agreed that lockdowns and quarantines are not justified for a disease similar to typical annual pneumonia and influenza deaths, the reasons for this gross contradiction in the two annual death numbers should be resolved. Is it correct to compare the COVID-19 death numbers to the FluView number, the leading causes of death number, or some other number and, if so, exactly why and how?
Video Transcript: The CDC uses two grossly contradictory numbers of annual deaths from pneumonia and influenza: about 55,000 in the annual leading causes of the death report and about 188,000 in National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) data used on the FluView web site to report the percentage of deaths each week due to pneumonia and influenza. These differ by a factor of OVER THREE.
This is the leading causes of death report for 2017 on the CDC web site. Table C: Deaths and percentage of total deaths for the 10 leading causes of death: United States, 2016 and 2017 on Page Nine. Note line item number 8 “pneumonia and influenza” with 55,672 deaths in 2017. Also note 2,813,503 deaths from all causes in 2017.
This is the CDC FluView web site. The red line purports to be the percentage of weekly deaths caused by pneumonia and influenza. It varies seasonally and averages about six percent over a year. Six percent of the 2,813,503 deaths in 2017 is 168,810 deaths, over three times the 55,672 deaths in the leading causes of death report.
The actual numbers are available here in data files from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). These give about 188,000 deaths from pneumonia and influenza in 2017. The death numbers for other years are quite similar.
To be clear, the leading causes of deaths report gives 55,672 deaths from pneumonia and influenza in 2017.
The average six percent of deaths from the FluView Graph means about 170,000 deaths must have been due to pneumonia and influenza — NOT 55,000. In fact, the raw data from the NCHS on the sites gives just about 188,000 deaths due to pneumonia and influenza in 2017, over THREE TIMES the number of deaths in the leading causes of death report and the widely quoted estimated deaths from flu from the CDC.
This means the number of pneumonia and influenza deaths must be highly arbitrary, dependent on unstated definitions, or there are gross counting errors. The larger FluView number of 188,000 is comparable to the current total of COVID-19 deaths in the US which is often compared to a smaller number of flu deaths each year similar to the leading causes of deaths number of 55,000.
Since it is generally agreed that lockdowns and quarantines are not justified for a disease similar to typical annual pneumonia and influenza deaths, the reasons for this gross contradiction in the two annual death numbers should be resolved. Is it correct to compare the COVID-19 death numbers to the FluView number, the leading causes of death number, or some other number and, if so, exactly why and how?
The most recent raw data appears to still be accessible on the FluView Pneumonia and Influenza Mortality web page:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm (see Pneumonia and Influenza Mortality Section)
FluView NCHS Raw Data File: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/weeklyarchives2019-2020/data/NCHSData34.csv
Leading Causes of Death Full Report: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_06-508.pdf
See Table C: Deaths and percentage of total deaths for the 10 leading causes of death: United States, 2016 and 2017 (Page 9 of PDF)
Line item 8 “Influenza and pneumonia” lists 55,672 deaths in 2017
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About Me
John F. McGowan, Ph.D. solves problems using mathematics and mathematical software, including developing gesture recognition for touch devices, video compression and speech recognition technologies. He has extensive experience developing software in C, C++, MATLAB, Python, Visual Basic and many other programming languages. He has been a Visiting Scholar at HP Labs developing computer vision algorithms and software for mobile devices. He has worked as a contractor at NASA Ames Research Center involved in the research and development of image and video processing algorithms and technology. He has published articles on the origin and evolution of life, the exploration of Mars (anticipating the discovery of methane on Mars), and cheap access to space. He has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
