Many have seen the graph of total deaths in the U.S. from coronavirus:
Also worth knowing is the daily mortality, the number who die each day:
The red line (with pink shading) is an estimate of the trend (with its uncertainty). The death rate appears to have levelled off recently, settling at around 2200 people per day, but there is extreme uncertainty in its trend — it could well be still on the rise, or declining.
But this much is certain: when it comes to COVID-19 deaths, not all states are created equal. Here’s the death rate for each state, as a proportion of its population; the area of the red dot in each state is proportional to the daily mortality per million population:
Although New York state has by far the most total deaths so far, Connecticut presently has the highest death rate (deaths per day per million), followed by New Jersey and Massachusetts, with New York coming in fourth.
Also of interest is how death rates are changing in various states. This is where New York shines, because despite being hardest hit in total, its death rate is currently declining. In this map, red triangles show states with a rising death rate, blue triangles states with a falling death rate:
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Open Mind 
Out of curiosity, is “deaths from coronavirus” only confirmed cases?
The reason I’m asking is that the total mortality rate (above a normal week of an average year) is probably more indicative.
Belgium has a worse ratio because of the assumption that most additional deaths are unconfirmed covid cases. Netherlands is reporting both numbers, hospitals are not overloaded, but additional mortality is double(!) the number or confirmed covid deaths.
Have you seen this page, Arnold?
Following new CDC guidelines: “As of April 14, 2020, CDC case counts and death counts include both confirmed and probable cases and deaths. This change was made to reflect an interim COVID-19 position statement issued by the Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists on April 5, 2020. The position statement included a case definition and made COVID-19 a nationally notifiable disease.
A confirmed case or death is defined by meeting confirmatory laboratory evidence for COVID-19. A probable case or death is defined by i) meeting clinical criteria AND epidemiologic evidence with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID-19; or ii) meeting presumptive laboratory evidence AND either clinical criteria OR epidemiologic evidence; or iii) meeting vital records criteria with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID19” [source]
This change is a further example of one of the many reasons why the label “confirmed cases” (used by some to designate total cases) is incorrect (see definitions for more details). The US CDC (and Worldometer) has always used the label “Total Cases.” Canada is another example where the “total number includes publicly reported confirmed and probable cases [source]
A French paper showing the beneficial impact of the lockdown imposed in France one month ago:
Click to access ImpactConfinement-EHESP-20200322v1.pdf
Good question, Arnold! I would also like to see a similar map of the country where average population density is identified instead of covid deaths. My guess is that average population density is going to match up rather closely with the death rate. Thanks for continuing the excellent work!
I’d like to see how the deaths/day (or week) fits in with background death rates. With a population of millions, the daily death rate is always a (surprisingly to many people) large number. I think the really interesting question is how is covid modifying that background rate – it gives you some idea of the degree to which it has actually changed what’s going on, as opposed to knocking off people who were going keel over from another issue very soon anyway. Has anyone seen such an analysis, or perhaps Tamino would like to take a look at the numbers if not. I did see a very blurry animated gif on Quora, apparently from worldometers, but unreferenced, with a ranking of US ’cause of death’ where covid moves to the top of the list, but is still much less than the total death rate from everything else. That’s some idea, but blurry gifs just make you want to find the real data.
[Response: Death rate from all causes, USA (2017 data) 23.4 PDPM (per day per million population). Death rate from COVID-19, USA (right now) 6.9 PDPM, higher than for heart disease (5.5) or cancer (5.0). Death rate from COVID-19, state of Connecticut (right now) 33 PDPM, Massachusetts 33 PDPM, New Jersey 27 PDPM (higher than the background rate).]
Barry, thanks for that.
Netherlands deaths per week, covid also overtook the leading causes of death:
Covid confirmed: 940 + 940 suspected
Cancer: 896
Hart/cardio: 763
For a population of about 17M