An Exercise in Data Visualization

I have been taking classes on data visualization. In this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is plenty of data about the disease. Yesterday, on Facebook, I shared a chart comparing the number of deaths in the United States reported weekly for the years 2015 through 2020. Below is that chart.

  

The chart is presented through April 11, 10 weeks before the last date reported in the dataset, because depending on the jurisdiction there is at least a one to eight week lag time for deaths being reported to and processed in the NCHS system. Thanks to Michelle Manos for that suggestion.

My friend Alison Jones asked if I could compare the excess deaths in 2020 to the number of reported COVID-19 deaths to see if it is possible there may be more deaths from COVID-19 than being reported. That chart is presented below.

Based on this analysis, through April 11, the estimated cumulative number of excess deaths in 2020 was about 117,000 compared to almost 58,000 deaths from COVID-19.