U.S. all-cause mortality returns to pre-COVID levels

The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against COVID: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal (Source: “A Positive Covid Milestone,” New York Times, July 17).

During COVID’s worst phases, the total number of Americans dying each day was more than 30 percent higher than normal. For long stretches of the past three years, the excess was above 10 percent. But during the past few months, excess deaths have fallen almost to zero, according to three different measures. The Human Mortality Database estimates that slightly fewer Americans than normal have died since March, while The Economist magazine and the C.D.C. both put the excess-death number below 1 percent.

Experts say the progress stems mostly from several factors:

• About three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot and more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with COVID, providing natural immunity from future symptoms (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those categories)
• Post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year