Excess Mortality

When I first read about some of the challenges determining whether a death was due to covid-19, I wondered if it would be better to simply look at total deaths on a particular day this year vs. prior years.  It turns out there are a number of people and organizations interested in in excess mortality:

• In Europe, EuroMOMO has charts and maps 
• In the US, the CDC has a chart of weekly excess deaths

However, it's challenging to find data you can use to do your own analysis.  The CDC has publicly available mortality data, but this only records the month, not the day of death. 

Our World in Data has a nice article explaining the importance of excess mortality, the challenges of acquiring data to examine it, and publications that are tracking it.