We wasted another day. What did that cost in lives?

Yesterday’s numbers (from Worldometers, as of about 7 PM EDT March 28)

Total US confirmed cases: 123,781

Increase in cases since previous day: 19,525 (vs. 18,507 increase yesterday)

Percent increase in cases since yesterday: 19% (vs. 22% yesterday)

Percent increase in cases since 7 days previous: 412% (vs. 522% yesterday)

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 2,229

Increase in deaths since previous day:

Percent increase in deaths since previous day: 31% (vs. 31% yesterday)

Minimum expected US deaths over course of pandemic: 63,033, based on yesterday’s cases (assumes complete lockdown of US starting today, with new cases dropping to zero 14 days from now)

Projected as of April 4 (7 days from yesterday):

These numbers assume we wait until April 4 to impose a total lockdown, and that total new cases drop to zero on April 18.

Total expected* cases: 509,978

Total expected* deaths over course of pandemic (based on 4/18 case figure): 259,697

Projected** number of actual deaths on 4/4 alone: 2,858 (i.e. almost as high as total deaths on 9/11. Of course, this number keeps climbing)

Case mortality rate used to compute total pandemic death estimates: 3% (vs. close-to-final reported rate for China of 4%)

Projected as of April 11 (14 days from yesterday):

These numbers assume we wait until April 11 to impose a total lockdown, and that total new cases drop to zero on April 18.

Total expected* cases: 2,101,108

Total expected* deaths over course of pandemic: 1,069,952

Projected** number of deaths on 4/11 alone: 15,325 (equal to about FIVE TIMES total deaths on 9/11. And this is the reported deaths in a single day)

* Normally, this number is calculated by growing yesterday’s case number by the average of the 7-day growth rates in cases for the last 7 days. As of today, that rate is 632%. However, the rates for the last six days have all been down, and I’m hoping that trend will continue. So I’m using yesterday’s 7-day growth rate of 412% to grow the case number for today’s calculations.

** Calculated by growing yesterday’s death number by average of 7-day growth rates in deaths for last 7 days. Today that rate is 475%.

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday (3/27): 3,238

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 1,704

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 41%

There’s a rare bit of good news in the numbers above. To project total US cases into the future, I’ve been using the average of the last seven 7-day growth rates in total cases. However, starting yesterday I used just the previous day’s rate – 412% - since there finally seems to be a declining trend in those cases (there was no discernible trend at all before five days ago). That has a big short-term impact on the number of cases compared with the number I would otherwise use today, 632%.

However, don’t get too excited about this, because the numbers are now getting so huge that almost any downward change – which doesn’t bring the growth rate closed to zero – has only one effect: it just pushes back the timeline for Armageddon by a week or two. For example, based on the total cases I’m projecting for April 11, I estimate that on that day, the total pandemic deaths (i.e. throughout the pandemic in the US) will be over 1 million for the first time.

Let’s change the growth rate in cases to 300%. Then, the total pandemic deaths number goes over 1 million on – get ready for it – April 17, and of course it keeps climbing from there; so we buy ourselves six days by doing this. If we change it to 200%, the date is April 30. Of course, this buys us more time to do the things that should have been done in February – make tests freely available (and responsive, since people are often waiting two weeks for their results), make more ventilators and face masks, etc. But it won’t be enough to be able to restart the economy, as explained below.

All estimates of total pandemic deaths are based on the assumption that, on that day (and based on that day’s case number), the US will institute a total lockdown of the country, along with total blocking of all travel between regions. And that lockdown and blocking will be 100% successful. In that case, new cases will drop to zero on the 15^th day, and we’ll know where every case in the country is. This way (and only through doing this), we can quarantine almost every single person who is infected or was exposed to an infected person (and an infected person – or even someone who might possibly be infected - can’t be quarantined with family members. In Wuhan, the authorities found out that quarantining whole families together often resulted in every member of the family becoming infected. So they took over hotels, etc. and isolated everyone).

If we don’t do this, we’ll never know everyone who is infected. Had we been able to test enough people early on – as other countries did, notably South Korea – we would never have had to go through this step. But we obviously didn’t test early, and now this is literally the only way we can learn every case that’s out there. It will be close to impossible to restart the economy until people are convinced the government knows where every case is. Otherwise, every trip to work, the grocery store, the dry cleaners, etc. is literally flirting with death. The idea that our government is seriously considering loosening the already loose guidelines in place now by Easter, or even Memorial Day, without having a good handle on where all the cases are (of course, that knowledge will never be 100%, but at the moment there is a real possibility that the reported case numbers now are low by a factor of ten, according to epidemiologists), is incredible and shows the complete divorce from reality in today’s White House (and unfortunately a lot of the rest of the executive branch). No economy could ever restart in that condition.

But let’s get to the title of this post: We wasted another day, since we didn’t institute a total lockdown yesterday. What was the cost of this in deaths over the course of the pandemic?

Fortunately, with the changes I made yesterday in how my spreadsheet is set up, I can see this very quickly: Total expected pandemic deaths are almost exactly 10,000 higher than they were yesterday. And for every day we wait, of course, the cost of waiting itself will go up…exponentially. So if we wait ‘til Tuesday March 31 (i.e. three days) to lock down the country, the total expected deaths will be 28,000 higher than they would be if we had locked down yesterday. Hmmm…Do you think it might be helpful if someone felt some…you know, urgency in all of this? Especially if you consider that you or I might be one of those 28,000?

Comments and questions are welcome. You can reach me at tom@tomalrich.com.