I sure hope this doesn’t continue…

Note from Tom: Because I put up yesterday’s post before the email feed came out, those of you who read these posts on the email feed missed Wednesday’s post. You can read it here.

When I read my online papers this morning, I was shocked to see that the US Covid-19 new infections number jumped over 40,000 yesterday, after being seemingly stuck in the low 20,000’s less than two weeks ago. But then I looked at the new deaths number on Worldometers and I used it to update my deaths projections, as shown below. If I was shocked by the new infections number, I was absolutely blown away my yesterday’s deaths number. If anyone still thinks the virus doesn’t thrive in hot weather, they must be living in a hole somewhere.

Here's a little background: Because there is a distinct seven-day cycle in deaths numbers, caused by the fact that many reporting offices are closed over the weekend, the best way to watch the trend in deaths is to look at deaths per day on a weekly basis. This peaked at 2,633 the week of April 18 and has declined continually through last week (the week ending June 20), when deaths per day were 637 and the 7-day change in deaths (which is what I use to project deaths – nothing more) was 4%. Even the day before yesterday, there were 806 deaths, which kept the 7-day change at 4%, its level for the last ten days or so.

Of course, new case numbers have been shooting up since June 15, and I was expecting that at some point, deaths would start to follow. But I was lulled into thinking this would be gradual and most likely not proportional, since a) infected people are now on average much younger than before, so they’re much less likely to die, and b) I was impressed by at least one news story saying that the medical profession had learned so much about how to treat Covid-19 cases that deaths wouldn’t increase anywhere near proportionally to the number of cases.

So what was yesterday’s death number that shocked me so much? It was 2,503. What was even more shocking was the way just that one number really kicked up the projected deaths numbers, which you can see below. To give you an example of the change it caused, projected deaths per day in July was in the low 700’s yesterday, and it is 1,080 today. Total deaths from March through July was about 160,000 yesterday, and it’s 163,179 today.

But here’s the worst part: Even though yesterday’s deaths number was a huge leap from deaths the day before (806), this just kicked the 7-day growth rate from 4 to 5%. Even based on the 5% rate, daily projections drop off immediately tomorrow, and average around 5-600 the next six days (since these are all equal to new deaths seven days previously times 1.05). Of course, the number for July 2 jumps over 2,600, since that is based on yesterday’s number – this pattern continues through the end of July.

But what happens if we start averaging more than 5-600 deaths per day over the next six days? That will definitely push the 7-day rate of change higher than 5%, and projected deaths in July will probably be much higher than they are now.

I wouldn’t be so alarmed by yesterday’s deaths number if daily new cases hadn’t essentially doubled in the past week. But they did, meaning there’s every reason to believe yesterday might just be the first of a string of higher daily deaths, with the 7-day growth rate continuing to increase. You may ask “Well, surely the 7-day rate won’t rise any higher than it was during the peak week of April 18.” And yes, I have to agree with you. That’s a good thing, because during the week of April 18, daily deaths grew at a rate of 52%. If that were the rate of increase starting tomorrow, we’d average 27,000 deaths per day in July.

Of course, that isn’t going to happen. But it’s also unlikely that daily deaths in July will even be as low as 1,080, barring some miracle. And judging by the tepid response to the new case numbers by governors in states like Florida, Texas and Arizona, and the complete disinterest in the whole matter shown by our – for want of a better word – national leader, I’m definitely not forecasting a miracle!

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 5%.

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	4,457	637
June 27	6,163	880
Month of June	23,516	784	56%
July 4	6,474	925
July 11	6,801	972
July 18	7,144	1,021
July 25	5,149	736
Month of July	33,466	1,080	142%
Total March – July	163,179

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 126,785

Increase in deaths since previous day: 2,503

Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 5% (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: 2,504,676

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 41,963

Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 1%

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 11%

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 1,052,389

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 126,785

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