(Washington Post via MSN) – Unlike much of Europe and East Asia, America hasn’t reached the point at which we have more people dying than we do being born.

At least not in the long run. We briefly blew past that point in a few winter months at the height of the covid-19 pandemic, according to our analysis of birth- and death-certificate data collected by the National Vital Statistics System.

That’s mostly past. Americans now die at rates similar to the trends we followed before the outbreak. But those trends weren’t all positive: We’re not far from the point where, each winter, deaths will regularly edge out births once more.

It’s a winter phenomenon because births tend to surge in August and slow to a crawl in February, while deaths — as we’ve previously found — soar in winter and slump in summer. (Read More)