"But the most significant disparity is that the population estimates in 2021 for older ages is not consistent with 2022 and 2020, so that the year-over-year changes are not the best comparisons for those groups. Don’t over-interpret that."
What would be an example of over-interpreting that?
The best example would be to pick a cause of death like cancer -- say, the whole category which is listed as "#Malignant neoplasms (C00-C97)"
Because of the population estimate oddity in 2021, the death rate estimate for 2021 for the 85+ years group increased 11.4% compared to 2020... WOWZA! ... but if you look at the cancer death count, it decreased 0.1%. Hmmm. Then in 2022, there's an 8% decrease in the death rate compared to 2021, and the number of deaths decreased 0.3%.
The overinterpretation would be that there was a spike in cancer death rates among the elderly in 2021... but there wasn't.
What there was, at the time the CDC finalized the WONDER database, was an underestimate of elderly living in nursing homes. The estimate got updated for the 2022 population estimates, and the CDC hasn't changed the 2021 population estimates in their database (yet). It may get changed in the future, but it hasn't happened yet.
So this is why I'm giving ALL the pieces in the display -- the number of deaths, the death rates, and the population from the database.
"But the most significant disparity is that the population estimates in 2021 for older ages is not consistent with 2022 and 2020, so that the year-over-year changes are not the best comparisons for those groups. Don’t over-interpret that."
What would be an example of over-interpreting that?
The best example would be to pick a cause of death like cancer -- say, the whole category which is listed as "#Malignant neoplasms (C00-C97)"
Because of the population estimate oddity in 2021, the death rate estimate for 2021 for the 85+ years group increased 11.4% compared to 2020... WOWZA! ... but if you look at the cancer death count, it decreased 0.1%. Hmmm. Then in 2022, there's an 8% decrease in the death rate compared to 2021, and the number of deaths decreased 0.3%.
The overinterpretation would be that there was a spike in cancer death rates among the elderly in 2021... but there wasn't.
What there was, at the time the CDC finalized the WONDER database, was an underestimate of elderly living in nursing homes. The estimate got updated for the 2022 population estimates, and the CDC hasn't changed the 2021 population estimates in their database (yet). It may get changed in the future, but it hasn't happened yet.
So this is why I'm giving ALL the pieces in the display -- the number of deaths, the death rates, and the population from the database.