COVID killed about 20% to 25% more Americans in 2021 than in 2020
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That statistic should really amaze us. Recall that in 2020 we had no vaccine, while in 2021 a vaccine that lowers the risk of dying from COVID by between 85% and 98% depending on age was available to everyone by spring.
Per the CDC, 385,000 Americans died from COVID in 2020, while the final figure for 2021 is going to end up somewhere in the neighborhood of 470,000 to 480,000 (The current official figure is 451,000, but this number is still subject to considerable data lag, and is going to go up quite a bit. Also it’s quite clear that official COVID death totals are seriously understated because of structural factors that lead a significant percentage to be mis-reported as due to other causes).
Relatedly, here are the all-cause mortality figures for the USA over the past four years:
2018: 2,839,705
2019: 2,854,838
2020: 3,389,062
2021: 3,450,000 (Provisional estimate based on current data collection trends. Final figures will be available in March).
These figures might come in handy the next time your fascist friends argue that people are dying “with COVID” rather than “from COVID.”