American COVID-19 Deaths Approach Annual Stroke Deaths

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jul 17, 6:54AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

American COVID-19 Deaths Approach Annual Stroke Deaths — © Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / Getty Images News via Getty Images

According to the Bing COVID-19 Tracker, almost 140,000 people have died from the disease in America. Medical experts say the first of these occurred on February 6, in Santa Clara, California. At the current rate of daily deaths from COVID-19, the total will pass the total annual deaths from strokes within a matter of days. The data on strokes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lists the cause of these deaths “cerebrovascular diseases.”

The last year for which total stroke deaths are available is 2017, when they numbered 146,383, which makes it the fifth largest killer in America. The stroke deaths number is just short of deaths from chronic lower respiratory diseases at 160,201. It is just above deaths from Alzheimer’s disease at 121,404.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington has one of the most widely regarded forecasts of U.S. deaths. Its prediction is that COVID-19 deaths will reach 208,255 sometime around November 1, with a range of 186,087 to 244,541, depending on circumstances like wearing masks that could bring the figure down to the low end of the estimate. The higher-end number is as much as 100,000 more than current fatal cases.

At a figure of 186,087, deaths would pass the fourth-largest cause of annual deaths in America, as previously mentioned, chronic lower respiratory diseases at 160,201, and in third place accidents (unintentional injuries) at 169,936.

[nativounit]
As another measure of the spread of the disease, it has caused over 590,000 deaths worldwide. The second leading cause of death in the United States is cancer at 599,108. At the current rate of fatal coronavirus cases worldwide, within a month global deaths will top 650,000. The leading cause of annual deaths in the United States is heart disease at 647,457.

The number of COVID-19 fatalities measured against the leading annual cause of death in the United States and the world shows just how deadly the disease has become and how fast it is spreading.
[recirclink id=723937]
[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.