Star Tribune
Most ‘excess deaths’ during pandemic were COVID
An analysis of mortality statistics suggests the death count in the United States from COVID-19 is higher than the 1.1 million officially linked to the disease, according to new University of Minnesota research.
A U sociologist teamed up with public health researchers in Boston and Philadelphia to analyze excess deaths — mortality from natural causes that surpasses historical norms. They found a pattern that only makes sense if COVID played a key role. Excess deaths not ascribed to COVID almost always occurred at the beginning of pandemic waves, and then disappeared when those waves reached peak levels of illness, the researchers found.
“If these excess natural cause deaths had nothing to do with COVID, you would probably see them happening throughout this period, irrespective of when the COVID waves are,” said Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, the U sociologist and demographer who coauthored the study.
The results were published in a prestigious science journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and argue that many of the 162,000 excess deaths assigned to other causes during the first 30 months of the pandemic should actually be tied to COVID. Exactly how many isn’t specified.
The accuracy of COVID death reporting remains divisive, even after the federal COVID public health emergency ended last spring. Donald Trump as president in 2020 had questioned whether doctors were inflating COVID death counts to obtain more federal relief money. Some lawmakers in Minnesota early in the pandemic questioned whether the state’s death toll was inflated by as much as 40%.
The latest findings come amid a decline in COVID activity, following an increase in illnesses driven by holiday gatherings and the fast-spreading JN.1 coronavirus variant that made up 78% of infections at the end of 2023. Testing in wastewater treatment plants is showing the lowest viral levels in Minnesota since Thanksgiving.
The most likely explanation for non-COVID deaths surging right before pandemic waves is that people weren’t worrying about COVID as much or testing for it at those times. So deaths related to the infectious disease were missed, the study concluded. Testing then rapidly increased as the pandemic waves became apparent, which reduced the share of excess deaths attributed to other causes.
Minnesota’s official count was updated Thursday to 15,776 COVID-19 deaths, including 220 deaths in 2024 that were mostly among people 75 and older.
The latest research suggests that Minnesota’s total is close to the mark; throughout COVID waves, far fewer of the state’s excess deaths were attributed to causes other than the infectious disease. Federal estimates show that COVID caused almost 4,000 more deaths than expected in the winter 2020 pandemic wave in Minnesota, for example, compared to 150 more deaths than expected from other causes.
The Minnesota Department of Health for the first three years of the pandemic had workers verify that deaths linked to COVID on death certificates were actually caused by the infectious disease. The state halted that costly process at the start of 2023 and started counting all deaths as related to COVID when people had tested positive for the infectious disease and their death certificates listed it as a cause, said Lydia Fess, an epidemiologist in the Health Department’s emerging infectious diseases section.
Internal research showed little change with this switch, and that COVID death reporting remained consistent across age, race and other demographic categories, she said.
Other factors beyond underreporting of COVID could have resulted in more excess deaths from non-COVID causes during pandemic waves. Minnesota hospital leaders warned during the pandemic that overcrowding threatened to delay or worsen care and increased risks of harm for all patients. However, the authors of the latest study noted that excess deaths from non-COVID causes tended to decline at the peak of pandemics, when the consequences of hospital overcrowding should have been at their worst.
The authors called for more consistency in the U.S. system of reporting deaths, because excess deaths from non-COVID causes appeared inflated in some rural counties and regions of the country where political appointees and others lacking medical training were responsible for declaring official causes. Those officials may have allowed political views about COVID and the nation’s pandemic response to influence their determinations, or have been persuaded by family members who didn’t want COVID listed on death certificates, they wrote.
Northeastern states such as Massachusetts and Rhode Island attributed so many of their excess deaths during the pandemic to COVID that it raises the potential of an overcount. However, Wrigley-Field said those states probably had fewer deaths from non-COVID causes, because their aggressive responses to the pandemic reduced the threat of other infections such as influenza.
Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
