Howtown asks 'How accurate was the Covid death count?' A Flashback Friday pandemic update

Happy Flashback Friday! For reasons I'll explain at the next Wayback Wednesday, I've changed today's post from the blog's year on Instagram and Threads to Howtown asking How accurate was the Covid death count?

After four years and dozens of studies, we know everything we're going to know about the death toll of the Covid pandemic.

Contrary to the conspiracy theorists and denialists, examination of excess deaths shows that, if anything, the U.S. undercounted COVID-19 deaths during the pandemic, although it was probably not that big and got smaller as the pandemic went on. On the other hand, I've always been skeptical that India had fewer people die from the disease than the U.S. The official number is 533,623. The polling data indicates 3.2 million deaths, although it could be as low as 3.1 million or as high as 3.4 million, at least six times higher than the official count. That, I believe. I also believe the actual global death toll is in the range of 16 million to 28.1 million with the most likely figure being 21 million, 3.1 times the total of official deaths. It also puts the death toll at the low end of the range for the 1918-1920 flu epidemic, "17 million to 50 million,[6][7] and possibly as high as 100 million, making it the deadliest pandemic in history." By the way, that last link shows an estimate of 27 million COVID-19 deaths. Yikes!

Stay tuned for another entry I can share in June.