How Can We Estimate the Death Toll from COVID-19?

Abstract

Boka and Wainer discuss to estimate the number of deaths caused by COVID-19 To monitor burials in the city of London, London's Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks gathered weekly mortality statistics These reports were dubbed the London Bills of Mortality and were instituted toward the latter half of the 16th century Over time, their content grew to include baptisms and the causes of the deaths reported The statistics they contained found many purposes A principal use was to provide Londoners with an early warning of the arrival of any pestilence or plague that had begun to establish itself, but there were other, more-surprising uses