April 27, 2020

Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: April 26 Update

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through April 26. The question of the day is: Why am I using data from the COVID Tracking Project for recent US death tolls? What’s wrong with the Johns Hopkins data?

Nothing, really. But here’s the thing: everyone’s mortality data is probably wrong. Evidence from analysis of excess deaths—that is, the number of deaths each day this year compared to the same day last year—suggests that we’re counting COVID-19 deaths wrong. The actual death toll is probably 50 percent higher than the official numbers. Maybe more.

But that doesn’t matter too much when you’re looking at trendlines. As long as the counting method is wrong in a consistent way, you’re OK. Unfortunately, a couple of weeks ago New York City decided to adopt a new counting procedure and they suddenly added 3,700 new COVID-19 deaths to their previous toll. This wasn’t because more people had actually died. It was solely because they changed the way they count.

If you use the new number, you get a big, artificial spike in the overall US number that doesn’t represent anything real. So I decided that in order to keep the trendlines readable, I’d use the overall number from the COVID Tracking Project, which doesn’t include New York’s spike. That’s why my number is different from the one you see on the news every day.

The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here. The COVID Tracking Project is here. The Public Health Agency of Sweden is here.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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