Cumulative US COVID deaths (date posted on CDC site)

• 827,309 (December 29, 2021)
• 1,127,104 (April 6 or 10, 2023) (most recent number I saw on Covid tracker main page)
• US COVID deaths 2022-2025 > 290,000
• • this is an estimate based on prior experience interpreting such data
  • numbers may be lagged by a week (frequency of reporting)
  • not all jurisdictions report in 2023 because they already sent 3 years worth of data to the CDC

I'm at 184K because i question how long paxlovid will continue being effective. SARS2 is adaptable and fast mutating.

The US has done a poor job on containing infection rates. RNA vax are not good for that purpose: the FDA has dragged their feet on NVAX approvals.

According to waste water testing data infections are up 20% compared to last year.

Phizer has strong incentives to manage the problem, not to fix it.

3000 Covid deaths per week in US before a possible surge.

the death toll is called "unacceptable".

There's no cure, few treatments, vaccines with fading efficacy, and other pressing health priorities, so I think 150k would be an approximate annual base rate

300k in 2022 + 400 per week for 3 years would yield 90.6k per year for 4 years.

350k in 2022 (my forecast) + 260k in 2023 (500 per week) + 195k in 2024 (375 per week) + 52k in 2025 (100 per week) would yield 214.25k per year for 4 years.

Both are plausible. My median (140k) is a bit optimistic.

On the one hand, deaths currently are down drastically, and if the trend of lower fatality rates from recent strains continues to hold, we could see relatively few deaths moving forward. On the other hand, there've been 181K so far this year alone, which puts the minimum over 45K.

Edit: For reference, the CDC's cumulative fatality count on December 31, 2021 was 825,414.

— edited by TeeJayKay

The minimum is now 25k.

Infectious disease scientist Trevor Bedford has an endemic endgame speculation thread where he guesses "perhaps 40k or 100k deaths per year from COVID":

substantial seasonal circulation with a speculative guess of 20% or 30% of the population infected each year ... This is higher than flu due to [higher] R₀ ... speculative guess would be that infection to fatality rate (IFR) drops 10-fold from its original ~0.6% to a flu-like ~0.06% ...Together, this would suggest perhaps 40k or 100k deaths per year in the US from COVID at endemic state

I feel pretty sure that Covid-19 deaths won't drop below flu deaths, which are 20-50,000 a year in normal years. 90% confidence interval 15,000 (only as bad as a pretty light flu season) to 250,000 (tail chance of some terrible Omega Variant that escapes immunity and sparks a whole 'nother pandemic.)

Edit: Argh, I shouldn't have committed my prediction to a comment so hastily. I thought more about worst cases and came down on the high end a bit, now I'm on 35k-90k with 90% interval 15k-200k.

— edited by EvanHarper

Related (on Pandemic):

• 2022 US Covid-19 Deaths?
• 2023 US Covid-19 Deaths?