As long as we’re walking off a cliff, it might as well be a big one!

This morning, the New York Times published an article that noted a quiet announcement made by the Trump administration on a website recently: The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, is no longer going to fund development of new treatments for severe lung damage caused by Covid-19; instead, they’re going to put even more of their eggs in the basket of vaccine development.

Of course, serious cases of Covid-19 usually include a devastating attack on the lungs, leaving patients unable to breathe without a ventilator. Even when they survive this experience, patients often experience lung damage as a result. A medical professional is quoted in the article as saying “The majority of patients who are in hospitals are dying because of lung injury.”

Meanwhile, we’re already investing a huge amount of money in vaccine research, to try to reach Trump’s goal of having a vaccine ready and in distribution by the end of the year - even if this means cutting some corners and ending up with a vaccine that doesn’t work well or is literally harmful. The article says that “BARDA has pledged more than $2.2 billion in deals with five vaccine manufacturers for the coronavirus, compared with about $359 million toward potential Covid-19 treatments.” Hmm, can you imagine why the administration would be so focused on having the vaccine this year, even though this might lead to our being further behind on a vaccine next year, if whatever bets they make this year don’t work out? For the life of me, I can’t think of a single reason…

Of course, the sensible thing would be to pursue both goals at the same time! After all, $359 million isn’t that huge a number compared to other initiatives. For example, the government currently has 61 million doses of hydroxychloroquine on hand (which have to be worth more than $359 million), since it turns out that the “science” that led Trump to believe this was the solution to Covid-19 wasn’t quite so solid after all – and now it turns out the drug can literally cause heart problems and death in Covid-19 patients. Who would have thought?

And in case you’re wondering, BARDA is the agency that Rick Bright headed, who was reassigned because he wouldn’t go along with efforts to fund hydroxychloroquine. Obviously, his successor isn’t quite so squeamish about bowing to political pressure.

The moral of the story: If you’re sick now or might get sick sometime in the future, you’d better pray that the risky bet on an accelerated vaccine pays off, since the Trump administration has decided that trying to save patients who get sick before a vaccine is available is Job Number Two (if that), not Job Number One.

The numbers

These numbers are updated every day, based on reported US Covid-19 deaths the day before (taken from the Worldometers.info site, where I’ve been getting my numbers all along). No other variables go into the projected numbers – they are all projections based on yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total Covid-19 deaths, which was 4%.

Note that the “accuracy” of the projected numbers diminishes greatly after 3-4 weeks. This is because, up until 3-4 weeks, deaths could in theory be predicted very accurately, if one knew the real number of cases. In other words, the people who are going to die in the next 3-4 weeks of Covid-19 are already sick with the disease, even though they may not know it yet. But this means that the trend in deaths should be some indicator of the level of infection 3-4 weeks previous.

However, once we get beyond 3-4 weeks, deaths become more and more dependent on policies and practices that are put in place – or removed, as is more the case nowadays - after today (as well as other factors like the widespread availability of an effective treatment, if not a real “cure”). Yet I still think there’s value in just trending out the current rate of increase in deaths, since it gives some indication of what will happen in the near term if there are no significant intervening changes.

Week ending	Deaths reported during week/month	Avg. deaths per day during week/month	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
March 7	18	3
March 14	38	5
March 21	244	35
March 28	1,928	275
Month of March	4,058	131
April 4	6,225	889
April 11	12,126	1,732
April 18	18,434	2,633
April 25	15,251	2,179
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
May 2	13,183	1,883
May 9	12,592	1,799
May 16	10,073	1,439
May 23	8,570	1,224
May 30	6,874	982
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
June 6	6,544	935
June 13	5,427	775
June 20	4,695	671
June 27	4,883	698
Month of June	22,656	755	55%
July 4	5,078	725
July 11	5,280	754
July 18	5,491	784
July 25	5,711	816
Month of July	24,854	802	110%
Total March – July	153,707

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 120,688

Increase in deaths since previous day: 745

Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 4% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above; it was 4% yesterday. There is a 7-day cycle in the reported deaths numbers, caused by lack of reporting over the weekends from closed state offices. So this is the only reliable indicator of a trend in deaths, not the three-day percent increase I used to focus on, and certainly not the one-day percent increase, which mainly reflects where we are in the 7-day cycle).

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases: 2,263,982

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 29,128

Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 1%

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 8%

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 931,079

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 120,688

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 11% (vs. 12% yesterday)

For a discussion of what this number means – and why it’s so important – see this post.

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com