The data used in this project comes from the National Centre for Health Statistics (NCHS) in the United States of America between 2 May 2020 and 13 January 2021. It reports the number of deaths involving COVID-19, Pneumonia, and Influenza across age groups, sex and US states. We investigated the speed of COVID-19 death counts compared to Pneumonia and Influenza death counts across the states and between females and males. Also, the disease with the highest impact on total death counts in the United States.

The first discovery is that there is a greater discrepancy in death counts for COVID-19 between males and females (across all ages) than for Pneumonia and Influenza. Moreover, there was an approximately equal range for males with COVID-19 and Pneumonia. There was a greater range for males with Pneumonia and the greatest range was for females with COVID-19. The second discovery is that COVID-19 showed the greatest impact on total deaths within the US, closely followed by Pneumonia, with Influenza showing a far less impact on total death counts. These results have implications for the impact that an effective and wide-spread vaccine can have on saving lives.