Earlier quoted context omitted.
The random hypothesis was made by OP, who inferred that the 45% increase in deaths is due to Covid-19. I would guess a lot of that 45% is due to Covid, but how much would be a guess, and I suspect OP is just guessing too. Overdoses are historically one of the leading causes of death among people in this age range, and we’re also setting records for overdose deaths this year [0], but that gets no almost coverage compa…
A really useful exercise you can do for yourself (I did it) is to download the CDC total US deaths data and plot each of the past 7 years as lines on an x axis that goes from week 1 to week 52 of the year. Keeping in mind that this graph does not take cause of death into account, you will note two striking features: 1) the death curves for the 5 years up to and including 2019 are extremely similar, with the exception…
There’s definitely a significant rise in excess deaths among 25-44 year olds coinciding with the Delta peak in August/September.
Something interesting though: In the Covid “valley” of June/July, when Covid-related deaths were at a record low nationally, 25-44 year olds still had a ~35% increase in excess deaths. I’d expect a drop in excess deaths close to prepandemic levels if they were being driven mainly by (short-term) Covid effects during that time. It seems like the baseline death rate increased independently of number of active Covid cases.
Covid deaths were accompanied by a steady increase in overdose deaths starting in early 2019 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm), rising from from 68k to 97k over the course of the pandemic.
I don’t have time at the moment to do the math, but I’d suspect most of the increase we’ve seen in the past year is due to Covid, but with the increase in overdoses and other causes contributing much than noise since 2019. This could explain the higher death rate that persisted throughout the summer.