For US data, I like how this table compares deaths from covid, flu, and pneumonia against the total deaths for all causes each week. I especially like that they show the ratio of current deaths vs the average of the 3 years prior for the same week.
The downside is how the data is slowly updated as each state trickles in data, so the most recent 4-8 weeks look lower now than if you check back later.
Still if you look back to April, flu deaths each week were in the hundreds, while covid deaths 9-15k. Saying it is 10x or more worse, doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
What really grabbed me is that the total US deaths in April from all causes was +40% compared to prior 3 year average.
Generic "flu" deaths are also counted the same way. Why do you think Covid deaths should be counted differently?
Then more importantly, it looks at the overall death rate. Because even if you completely ignore the covid count, the fact that there are so many more people dying than normal should grab people's attention.
If those extra deaths weren't from COVID-19, what were they from?
The first debunking of it I found:
Some quotes:
“Under these conditions, there does not seem to be a significant difference between the mortality rate of SARS-CoV-2 in OECD countries and that of common coronaviruses (χ2 test, P=0.11). Of course, the major flaw in this study is that the percentage of deaths attributable to the virus is not determined, but this is the case for all studies reporting respiratory virus infections, including SARS-CoV-2.”
“Under these conditions, and all other things being equal, SARS-CoV-2 infection cannot be described as being statistically more severe than infection with other coronaviruses in common circulation.”
“Finally, in OECD countries, SARS-CoV-2 does not seem to be deadlier than other circulating viruses.”
As of the Mar 19th 2020 issue of the Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.
Even without reading the paper, I can tell you that if this analysis were to be repeated, we would get different results, given that we are now (four months later) at 540,000 (confirmed, which is definitely an underestimate) deaths, rather than 4000.