Unveiling Seasonal Insights: Analyzing CDC Death Data to Understand Seasonal Patterns of Mortality
In every season, there are physical transformations that unfold around us and within our own bodies. The shifting seasons bring about new challenges with illnesses and strains of the new flu viruses or diseases. Most people can remember the dread of waking up with a sore throat or stuffy nose in the winter. For those with weakened immune systems, these transitions are more difficult. As a student data scientist, the CDC death data allows me to delve into patterns of death across the years and then question: Do these deaths form a story around seasons? These insights can inform public health strategies and improve healthcare. Through examining the death rates across various seasons I was able to uncover patterns of seasonal mortality: the winter season claims the highest toll.
The CDC stores a great deal of nationwide data each year. We could look into the worst states, the worst illnesses, the worst years, or in my case the worst seasons. Winter by far was the worst season with a 22.54% increase in the year with the least amount of deaths. From 2014–2023 there were 5,512,107 total deaths in winter and 4,497,403 total deaths in the fall. The second closest to winter was spring with 5,067,056 a glaringly obvious divide. The data the CDC gives isn’t just seasonal diseases though. Influenza and pneumonia, Diseases of heart, COVID-19, Multiple Cause, Alzheimer disease, Chronic lower respiratory diseases, Diabetes mellitus, Malignant neoplasms, Cerebrovascular diseases, Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis, Other diseases of respiratory system, Septicemia, and Other make up their data. Almost all of these do have an increase in deaths in winter but that could be from outside causes such as people being in closer quarters together. Using a subplot through Matplotlib I could visually view how each season affected these diseases in 2022. At a glance 2020 could also provide some powerful information on how society was affected by a global pandemic but 2022 gave more baseline information.
The most common illnesses which are seasonal, are viruses such as COVID-19. Derived from the data was how COVID-19 changed over seasons comparatively between 2020 and 2022. With a new data visual of a scatterplot, I viewed the deaths through a scatterplot and bar chart. Both showed similar information. In 2020, there was not a high change in Fall, Spring, or Winter (Summer was the lowest) while in 2022 every season was low besides Winter. This could be from a large spike or insight into how communities work. In 2020 some outliers appeared in Spring and Winter likely reflecting the initial impact of the pandemic, showcasing the beginning of the outbreak and various spikes. To look more into this phenomenon I looked at how Influenza and Pneumonia seasonal viruses work compared to COVID-19. The two diseases had a similar theme of spikes during winter months with baselines for the other seasons. However, while analyzing Influenza and Pneumonia data I found that in 2020 a downward trend in deaths started. This could suggest the possible influence of quarantining, masks, and lockdowns teaching people better health hazards or how COVID-19 became a more prominent disease. A different dataset could lead to more insight into this.
One dataset stood out from the rest: Other. The only column that had summer as the highest mortality rate at 91,036. I asked myself what does “Other” mean? Does this encompass all other types of diseases or even cancer? I found cancer to be an unlikely option with a low number less than 100,000 for every season compared to other illnesses in the hundreds of thousands to millions. Even Alzheimer a disease with no known correlation to seasons had a higher rate in Winter and Spring. It was a question I was unable to answer without potentially contacting the CDC.
So what did we learn from this analysis? Keep the immune system strong during the Winter months when mortality rates tend to peak. COVID-19 and certain viruses exhibit clear seasonal patterns that further investigation could reveal causes for. The CDC’s plethora of data offers valuable insight into public health and paints a clear picture of the leading causes of death.
