COVID in Colorado: How many people actually died?

Photo by Parastoo Maleki on Unsplash

The COVID-19 pandemic forever changed society and unfortunately claimed many human lives. Through lockdowns and mask orders, many were willing to help do their part in stopping the spread. Others on the other hand were confrontational in their willingness to support a cause they did not believe in. They asked many questions regarding the effectiveness of masks, and vaccines and whether people were actually dying from this illness. A COVID-19 denier would suggest that the illness didn’t actually kill anybody and that hospitals inflated or even outright lied about COVID-19 deaths. The CDC and other news outlets have also released their take on accuracy counting and death inflation. This article is not debating the deadliness of the illness, but rather examining the validity of reports claiming inaccuracies in reporting.

Did COVID-19 cause this death? This was a question answered every day by doctors in hospitals around the country during the COVID-19 pandemic. Deaths are visualized only now as numbers. The data explored in this article is from the Centers for Disease Control and Colorado’s county COVID death tracker. The CDC reports deaths from several different diseases and illnesses. The dataset examined dates back to 2014 and contains numbers from 2023. For the purposes of this article, the time frames examined were 2020–2023 as that is when the COVID-19 illness was active. Colorado’s county COVID death tracker follows the deaths across Colorado’s 65 counties also for the years 2020–2022. Summed into years, Colorado’s county tracker reported 4,910 deaths in 2020, 5,714 deaths in 2021, and 395 deaths in 2022. The CDC dataset classified COVID deaths into two categories: “COVID-19, Multiple Cause” and “COVID-19, Underlying Cause”. Isolated in Colorado, the total number of deaths for both categories in 2020 was 9,603, 11,577 in 2021, and 5,580 in 2022. Comparing these years we can begin to see drastic differences, so what gives?

How are COVID deaths counted? Confusion over whether people die “of” COVID-19 or “with” COVID-19 clearly makes data counting complicated. It was mentioned earlier that the CDC broke COVID-related deaths into two categories, so if we instead split them back into their respective categories and focus solely on the “COVID-19, Underlying Cause” the numbers dwindle down. Looking strictly into this category the 2020 deaths are 4,470, 5,404 in 2021, and 2,253 in 2022. Colorado’s county COVID death tracker reported 4,910 deaths in 2020 yet the CDC states that number was 4,470. In 2021 the difference is 310 deaths with Colorado’s country COVID death tracker claiming the higher amount. An exception could be made for 2022 as the Colorado county tracker did not include any 2023 statistics and could indicate a pause in their reporting updates, thus leaving a massive discrepancy in the 2022 reports. In the years 2020 and 2021, the Colorado country tracker reported a higher death toll concerning COVID deaths.

Returning back to an early point, the criteria and/or policies for reporting COVID-related deaths were confusing as doctors had to assess whether an individual died of the illness or with the illness at a time when hospitals were being overrun with sick individuals and severely understaffed. COVID-19 was the nation’s most observed and scrutinized health statics to date and it is now certain that inaccurate reporting took place during this time.

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