0 the number of deaths during a particular period above the usual, expected number under normal conditions, which can show the effect of something like a disease or harmful event: --
In the year after breaking a hip, the excess mortality was between 20 and 33 percent.
Excess mortality would be a precise indicator of the severity of the famine.
In the absence of a reliable figure from the government, researchers attempted in the months since the storm to calculate the "excess mortality".
Their paper reviews the excess mortality of the 1918 influenza pandemic.