The Europeans send us a message!

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that, in preparation for reopening Europe to travel (both internal and external), officials at the European Union have prepared two lists of countries whose citizens will be allowed to enter Europe starting July 1, based on those countries’ records in fighting the novel coronavirus. Neither list includes the US, Russian or Brazil, although they do include countries that have done a good job of fighting the virus, including Uganda, Cuba and Vietnam – none of which are currently major economic players, of course.

The list will be revisited every two weeks, so if the US situation substantially improves, we might get back on at some point. The list is based on average number of infections over the past 14 days per 100,000 population.  Currently, that number for the US is 107, while it’s 16 for the EU (it’s 190 for Brazil, if that makes you feel any better).

And if you want more information on why we’re being excluded, just look at the graph I wrote about in my post yesterday: After US cases peaked at almost exactly the same level as the EU’s did in early April and declined modestly after that, our total cases are back close to their peak level, while the EU’s are now about one seventh of ours, even though their population is close to 40% higher than ours.

I know a lot of people will read this and say sarcastically “Dang, are you telling me I won’t be able to take my annual vacation on the Riviera this summer, along with the rest of the world elite?” But unfortunately, there’s a lot more at stake. We can’t maintain our status as the world’s economic powerhouse if Americans aren’t welcome elsewhere. And being the economic powerhouse doesn’t just convey prestige: It’s why people all of the world trust the US as they do no other country for investment and savings. If we start to lose that – and we definitely will if this situation continues for long – all of a sudden our economic options will be much more constrained. And we’ll get poorer, not richer, in the years ahead.

Once again, we’ll never fix the economy before we fix the virus. 

The numbers

I’ve once again omitted the table of projected deaths, since it is virtually identical to yesterday’s. The actual numbers below are updated, as always. The big news is new cases continue to go up in absolute and percentage terms, for the first time since April. They’re back to increasing at a 10% weekly rate, the highest since late May. This isn’t a good trend.

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 123,476

Increase in deaths since previous day: 865

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: 2,424,493

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 36,268

Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 2%

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 10%

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 1,020,412

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 123,476

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