Subscribe
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the leading causes of death in the United States include heart disease, cancer, accidents, lung disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, flu/pneumonia, kidney disease and suicide.
In the past month, a new cause of death has been slowly rising: COVID-19. Dr. Maria Danilychev created this chart to illustrate the startling rise of coronavirus deaths. Her chart compares COVID-19 deaths to the other leading causes in the U.S. over the last month.
Dr. Danilychev’s chart uses the actual confirmed number of COVID-19 deaths compared to the extrapolated daily deaths for the other top causes of death, based on CDC data.
Death projections
Today the global number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths reached 50,000, as cases approached one million. Earlier this week, President Trump warned that the coronavirus could lead to 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the U.S. At the high end of that estimate, COVID-19 would become the third leading cause of death, behind only heart disease and cancer.
A worst-case scenario British model often cited by the White House estimated the coronavirus could kill two million Americans with no mitigation efforts, which would be three times the number who die from heart disease each year.
But White House officials pointed out that if we’re vigilant, the actual number of deaths could still come in below the 100,000 to 240,000 figure. “We’re going to do everything we can to get it significantly below that,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the top medical experts on President Trump’s task force.
