Why? Here’s why!

Yesterday’s post pointed to the curious fact that a large portion of the US seems to accept the current close-to-steady-state number of daily Covid-19 deaths as not too big a problem (as you can see below, I’m projecting 839 deaths per day in June and 993 in July, based on simply projecting the current 7-day rate of increase in deaths of 5% into the future).

But the post didn’t talk about Covid deaths; instead, it described deaths from a supposed rash of airline crashes. The final sentence was “Of course, the irony of this whole situation is that, if the deaths were being caused by a problem like a global flu pandemic, there would be no discussion at all of whether any level of deaths was acceptable or not. Why do we make an exception when the cause is airline crashes?”

This sentence was of course exactly the opposite of what I was really asking: Why are we accepting a daily US Covid-19 death rate of 800-900, when we would never for a minute accept the same daily toll from airline crashes? I can see three pretty clear reasons for this, but if anybody else has an idea, I’d love to hear it.

The first is, of course, the belief that the benefits of fully reopening the economy far outweigh the cost of “living with” a sustained high level of deaths. I certainly agree that the economy will never fully recover until it is reopened, but it’s also the case that if the virus isn’t defeated or an effective vaccine made widely available (which is still not at all certain), we’ll never have robust economic growth, period. And the economic situation of the US is likely to slide relative to that of the rest of the world, since nobody will want to travel to the US and US citizens won’t be welcome – except perhaps after a 14-day quarantine – in other countries, perhaps even in Canada.

The second is a certain..well, oneriness that is part of the American spirit. We just don’t like to be told what to do unless we see an immediate benefit for ourselves (like if we’re warned to step out of the way of an approaching truck). Unfortunately, none of the measures we should all be taking now to combat the pandemic – and the biggest is wearing masks, which seem to be more and more recognized as a key tool for this – produce immediately apparent benefits for us. At best, we’ll come to realize months later that we never got sick because we followed the guidelines. And we’ll never see the benefits to other people that would accrue if we for example were sick asymptomatically and we didn’t infect other people unknowingly because we had a mask on.

But I’d like to focus on the third. I’ve pointed this out earlier, although it’s been a while: The people who are gladly “accepting” the deaths aren’t the ones who are predominantly doing the dying. I really don’t think people at risk because of their jobs – meat packing plant workers, grocery store workers, health care workers, police officers, etc. – tend to be terribly inclined to accept a high level of deaths, when it’s clear they’re the ones who will be dying (along with seniors, of course).

I made the suggestion at one point that owners or executives of companies that force their workers to come back to work (since otherwise they’ll be deemed to have quit and lose their unemployment insurance payments) be required to work on the “front lines” – the factory floor, store or restaurant floor, office cubicles, etc. – one day a week. If nothing else, this would be a good way to ensure that the company was doing everything possible to keep its workers safe, since OSHA, the government’s guardian of workplace safety, has decided there’s nothing they can possibly do to improve the situation, during the greatest workplace safety crisis ever.

And if Donald Trump is so set on having his rally in Tulsa this week – against the wishes of the Tulsa Director of Public Health and the Republican mayor (who was never even asked about hosting the event and doesn’t plan to attend) – and doing this without any social distancing and only “optional” mask wearing, which means nobody will wear one, he should withdraw the waiver he’s making every attendee commit to, saying they won’t sue if they get sick. This is close to the classic definition of chutzpah – the boy who kills his parents and demands clemency on the grounds that he’s an orphan.

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	5,630	804
June 27	5,900	843
Month of June	25,166	839	59%
July 4	6,183	883
July 11	6,479	926
July 18	6,789	970
July 25	7,114	1,016
Month of July	30,769	993	122%
Total March – July	162,133

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 117,859

Increase in deaths since previous day: 331 (vs. 681 yesterday)

Percent increase in deaths since previous day: 0% (this number was 1% yesterday)

Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 5% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above – it was 5% yesterday. There is a 7-day cycle in deaths, 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: 2,162,406

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 20,061

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: 870,077

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 117,859

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