The other reason that the narrative was busted is the excess deaths. Just look at the chart halfway down this page...
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
The CDC tracks deaths. It's seasonal by nature and goes a little higher during the winter months. But they have trend lines and know roughly, in a large country of 330M people, how many people are expected to die each year/week/month.
You can, in fact, see a blip of excess deaths in the winter of 2017-18, which corresponds with the worst flu season in the last decade. And then you see, starting in Mar 2020, a consistent trend WELL above the line that persists today. If you look at the shape of the graph, that shows an Apr/May peak, a summer mini-peak, and then another major peak around the holidays--exactly what COVID graphs look like.
Similarly, using "excess mortality rates" as quantified into P-Scores by the below linked study I found, it's VERY evident COVID-19 drastically lifted overall death numbers across the board.
"The P-score is defined as excess deaths as a percentage of ‘normal’ deaths. For weekly data, ‘normal’ deaths are often defined as the previous five-year average of the same weeks. ‘Normal’ death rates reflect persistent factors such as the age composition of the population, the incidence of smoking and air pollution, the prevalence of obesity, poverty and inequality, and the normal quality of health service delivery. An advantage of the P-score is that it takes into account such differences in ‘normal’ deaths between countries or regions."
Study starts by listing reasons why U.S. should've been better prepared, ready, and ultimately experienced lower excess mortality rates than Europe - reasons such as: more time to prepare, younger population, and lower population density. Study defines statistical uses before comparing U.S. values to Europe. Study concludes excess mortality rates are worse, questioning
"why the US, with its technical and institutional capabilities and other advantages cited, was far less effective in its response to COVID-19 than Europe?"My knee jerk reaction is to believe that
as a whole America is a much sicker, more unhealthy nation than we realize. Although we smoke less tobacco, to compare to Europe, Americans are more overweight, suffer higher rates of diabetes, eat more red meat, drink more sugary, acidic energy drinks, and most of all, lead the world in (ab)use of highly addictive benzodiazepines prescriptions (Xanax, Klonopin, Valium) which risks the population later defaulting to equally addictive Adderall, Ambien and ultimately Heroin and Meth.
https://voxeu.org/article/us-excess-mortality-rate-covid-19-substantially-worse-europe-s -
