The attached protocol uses multi-year all-cause mortality data from the USA Centers for Disease Control to estimate the effect on the overall death rate of social distancing and other measures designed to halt the spread of COVID-19. Despite the rising death count from COVID-19, the data show a dramatic drop in overall mortality over the first several weeks of 2020. Presumably this is due to decreased deaths from other transmissible diseases such as influenza, fewer traffic deaths due to a decrease in the amount of driving, and so on. The data can be found at https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html.