Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person in the US to be confirmed with Ebola, just died from the horrific illness.
We estimated the approximate number of deaths in the US from various causes in the eight days between Sept. 30, when the CDC confirmed that Duncan had Ebola, and Oct. 8, when he died:
We made these estimates by taking the number of deaths from each cause in recent years and estimating an average daily death rate for each cause. These estimates are thus very approximate: the exact number of deaths from these causes in 2014 will probably be slightly different than in other recent years, and causes like the flu and pneumonia have a lot of seasonal variation.
Death numbers from 2012 for heart disease, diabetes, and flu/pneumonia came from the CDC's 2012 "Mortality in the United States" report. Estimates for deaths from lung cancer in 2014 came from the American Lung Association. Deaths in 2011 from unintentional falls and motor vehicles were found in the CDC's FastStats page for accidents. Finally, all deaths from guns in 2011 came from GunPolicy.org.
