Originally Posted by
RJPinAZ
Thanks for the clarification. Sorry for being dense here, but why are the 67,456 deaths being reported by the CDC at that link more useful, reliable, believable, accurate or what ever you want to call it, than the 38,576 in provisional data? I'm honestly not being snarky here, I really don't fully understand the significance of the difference when it comes to judging the severity of the outbreak. On the "Provisional Death Count" page, the deaths are described as "Deaths with confirmed or presumed COVID-19, coded to ICD–10 code U07.1" using death certificates, while the "Cases in the U.S." page counts "confirmed and probable cases and deaths". "Probable" being those cases which don't seem to include lab confirmation. I do understand there is a lag in confirmation as it takes time for death certificates to be processed, but a difference of a factor of 1.7 times is pretty big.