Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed something in my post last week about how the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) lags the rest of the nation by over four months in reporting death data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). I posted the national and state charts from the CDC showing excess deaths from Covid-19. North Carolina’s chart ended on January 30, at the pandemic’s peak. The chart for the United States, however, ended on June 5, well past the peak.

See if you can spot something from the U.S. chart:

Right. You can see that the U.S. has not been suffering excess deaths in recent weeks.

But what about North Carolina?

Fortunately, we demonstrated last summer that — even without DHHS reporting to the CDC — it is possible to see whether North Carolina has been witnessing Covid-caused excess deaths.

At the end of this post I will give all the data, going back to March 2020. But the main takeaway from it is this: North Carolina has not been suffering excess deaths owing to Covid-19 since mid-March 2021.

Gov. Roy Cooper being so desperate to keep North Carolina under a “state of emergency” would perhaps explain his administration’s reticence to report data in a timely manner. Nevertheless, Occam’s Razor would support the theory that the culprit is simply incompetence, as would Cooper’s history with the rape kit testing backlog, inability to get federal disaster relief funds to poor hurricane victims, and unemployment insurance benefits delays.

Week ending date Number of deaths above average to be considered excess deaths Covid deaths for the week Difference Covid excess death event likely?
3/7/20 110 0 -110 NO
3/14/20 112 1 -111 NO
3/21/20 115 0 -115 NO
3/28/20 111 6 -105 NO
4/4/20 99 43 -56 NO
4/11/20 105 57 -48 NO
4/18/20 106 133 27 YES
4/25/20 109 120 11 YES
5/2/20 106 117 11 YES
5/9/20 94 123 29 YES
5/16/20 101 104 3 YES
5/23/20 103 120 17 YES
5/30/20 108 162 54 YES
6/6/20 104 126 22 YES
6/13/20 93 104 11 YES
6/20/20 100 98 -2 NO
6/27/20 108 103 -5 NO
7/4/20 109 103 -6 NO
7/11/20 107 122 15 YES
7/18/20 101 143 42 YES
7/25/20 101 179 78 YES
8/1/20 108 206 98 YES
8/8/20 110 192 82 YES
8/15/20 107 196 89 YES
8/22/20 107 200 93 YES
8/29/20 103 194 91 YES
9/5/20 106 191 85 YES
9/12/20 110 187 77 YES
9/19/20 107 196 89 YES
9/26/20 108 194 86 YES
10/3/20 111 176 65 YES
10/10/20 105 189 84 YES
10/17/20 108 194 86 YES
10/24/20 113 214 101 YES
10/31/20 113 250 137 YES
11/7/20 114 245 131 YES
11/14/20 109 253 144 YES
11/21/20 107 263 156 YES
11/28/20 112 286 174 YES
12/5/20 119 294 175 YES
12/12/20 117 435 318 YES
12/19/20 114 485 371 YES
12/26/20 113 496 383 YES
1/2/21 115 636 521 YES
1/9/21 121 681 560 YES
1/16/21 121 720 599 YES
1/23/21 115 694 579 YES
1/30/21 116 605 489 YES
2/6/21 118 458 340 YES
2/13/21 118 385 267 YES
2/20/21 117 256 139 YES
2/27/21 111 210 99 YES
3/6/21 110 138 28 YES
3/13/21 111 105 -6 NO
3/20/21 114 95 -19 NO
3/27/21 111 72 -39 NO
4/3/21 108 80 -28 NO
4/10/21 105 70 -35 NO
4/17/21 99 72 -27 NO
4/24/21 105 83 -22 NO
5/1/21 103 72 -31 NO
5/8/21 100 91 -9 NO
5/15/21 98 83 -15 NO
5/22/21 95 84 -11 NO
5/29/21 101 54 -47 NO
6/5/21 105 50 -55 NO

Data sources: CDC, DHHS