evidence: The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2021 there will be more than 608,000 cancer deaths. There’s an important caveat: that estimate doesn’t account for the effect the COVID-19 pandemic "has likely had on cancer diagnoses and deaths," because the projections are based on reported cases and deaths through 2017 and 2018. In England, according to an August 2020 Lancet article about how the pandemic could affect cancer deaths, "substantial increases" in the number of avoidable deaths "are to be expected" thanks to people delaying medical care that could have identified and led to cancer treatments for patients sooner. [...] COVID-19, meanwhile, was the third most common cause of death in the United States in 2020, according to provisional mortality data from the National Vital Statistics System. It caused about 375,000 deaths here in 2020. The leading cause of death was heart disease, killing 690,000 people, followed by cancer, which killed 598,000 people.