By: Bill King

I have been wanting to update you on the fatality data for the U.S. However, the death certificates come in so slowly, I did not want to share incomplete data. But there has now been more than enough time for the 2024 data to stabilize.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, slightly over 3 million people died in the U.S. in 2024. That is a fatality rate (fatalities/1,000 population) of just under 9.0. For the fifty years prior to COVID, the rate had ranged from 7.9 to 9.5. It hit the low of 7.9 in 2009 but steadily increased thereafter, reaching 8.7 in 2019.

Of course, the rate soared during the pandemic, averaging about 10 for 2020-2022. There were about 1.4 million more deaths in those years than would have been expected by the trends in place before CO

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