Death totals from the CDC links.  I calculated change vs. prior year: 2014: 2,626,418 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_04.pdf) 2015: 2,712,630; +86k, +3.3% vs. 2014 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr66/nvsr66_06.pdf) 2016: 2,744,248; +32k, +1.2% vs. 2015 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr67/nvsr67_05.pdf) 2017: 2,813,503; +69k, +2.5% vs. 2016 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_09-508.pdf) 2018: 2,839,205; +26k, +0.9% vs. 2017 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db355-h.pdf) 2019: 2,852,609, +13k, +0.5% vs. 2018  (https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Counts-of-Deaths-by-State-and-Select-Causes/muzy-jte6, weekly data for 2019 & 2020) 2020 thru 11/21 (with the last 2 weeks not being fully updated yet):  2,861,965   So, with 5 weeks to go, we already have more total deaths than 2019.  If you compare the first 45 weeks of 2020 vs. the same time period in 2019, 2020 has seen 315k more deaths, a 12.9% increase (reminder, the lowest % increase over the last 5 years was +3.3%) Other than the last 2 weeks whose data is not fully updated, the lowest weekly total has been 56,657.   So even if we're super conservative and assume tons of people that would have otherwise died during the last 5 weeks of the year already died this year and miraculously weekly deaths drop to 50,000, (+ another 10k for the most recent week of data which is only at 39k), we're still looking at a total of 3,121,965 deaths, or +269k deaths vs. 2019 and a +9.4% increase. If we're more realistic but still err on the lower side (since December deaths actually tend to be on the higher side and most of the recent weeks have been 57-58k) and say each of the last 5 weeks will be equal to the lowest weekly total of the year thus far (+ another 16.5k deaths for the most recent week of data), you end up with 3,161,750,  or +299,785 deaths vs. 2019 and 10.5% increase.