Monthly Deaths

Chart 1

Explanation

Each month in the active time period (2020–2023) is compared to the mean and standard deviation of the equivalent months in the historical time period (1999–2019) .

Note that the number of deaths appears to fall off extremely sharply in the most recent months. This is because it takes some time for the CDC to finish collecting the data. The most recent data included in the charts is from CDC datasets published on 2023-08-10.

Chart 2

Explanation

This second chart shows the Z-Score for each month in the active time period. Using the same comparisons from the first chart, each month is shown as the number of standard deviations away from the historical mean. Note that 99.7% of normal data should be within 3 standard deviations (-3 < Z-Score < 3). Anything more than 3 standard deviations is data that is far outside the norm. (Though for small populations states, there may not be enough data to smooth out noise.)