A lesson for the schools

The Washington Post had a very revealing opinion piece this morning entitled “This summer camp took extraordinary covid-19 precautions. It still failed.” It describes how a camp in Missouri put in place “NASA developed” air filtration systems in the cabins. Other precautions included “documented health screenings; daily temperature checks; highly qualified doctors and nurses; hand sanitizer in all buildings; limited access to camp grounds for outsiders; elaborate quarantine protocols; rigorous cleaning; and stringent limits on touching — even a ban on campers exchanging high-fives and holding hands while saying grace. Before camp started, campers and employees also had been urged to self-isolate for two weeks.”

The article continues “None of it worked. On July 2, with the outbreak spreading out of control, Kanakuk’s camp was shut down. Missouri state health officials have since said that more than 80 campers, counselors and staff tested positive for covid-19, and camp officials told families that those infected should quarantine themselves for two weeks — presumably in homes where their parents and siblings will now be at risk.” So a camp that tried their best to protect kids and staff ended up becoming a superspreading event.

However, I can think of one thing that they didn’t do, that might have made a difference: daily Covid-19 testing of all campers and staff, with results available immediately. And if the results were delayed for some reason, the people tested would need to be isolated until they were available. But of course, this is fantasy. I know of only one workplace or school in the US where such a level of testing is being done, and that’s the White House.

I’d say it’s highly unlikely there will ever be that level of testing available anywhere but the White House, absent a massive federal effort to get it done. Admiral Brett Giroir, the “testing czar” at DHS, said on NPR yesterday that by September the administration expects to be doing 100 million tests a month, because of new technology and test pooling. On today’s program, though, it was pointed out that there are already shortages in all of the materials – pipettes, swabs, etc. – required to take a sample in the first place. Obviously, those all would also have to be available in huge supply in order for the US to do anywhere near 100 million tests a month (and the estimate I’ve heard of the level of testing necessary for the US to safely go back to work and school is 4 million tests a day, which works out to more than 100 million a month. But even 100 million would be a great figure if it could actually be achieved – but it can’t).

Who’s in charge of fixing those problems? Probably not Adm. Giroir. The last I heard (although that was more than a month ago), it was Jared Kushner, who isn’t satisfied with achieving peace in the Mideast streamlining government, rebuilding our infrastructure, and behind-the-scenes making Trump’s re-election campaign a great success. He now intends to apply those same skills to solving all of the logistical problems of getting testing supplies. God save us (nobody else will, at this point)!

So here’s the lesson for the schools: You can do everything right when they reopen, including following CDC guidelines and especially installing air filtration systems in every classroom in every school, and you could still could end up becoming a super-spreader (and of course, shutting down immediately). If you could test all kids and staff every day and get immediate results, you might have a good chance of avoiding this fate.

All this will take is lots of money and even more good luck, neither one of which is in great supply nowadays. However, absent such good luck, there’s simply no way almost any school can reopen and be able to guarantee to parents that their kids won’t become infected with Covid-19 at school. But Trump and DeVos want them to reopen anyway, so the kids’ parents can get back to work. Sure, we’ll lose some of them (as well as their family members and friends, who they’ll infect as well). But it’s all for a good cause: Trump’s re-election!

Breaking news! From WaPo: “We don’t want CDC guidance to be a reason why people don’t reopen their schools,” said Vice President Pence during a roundtable discussion at Louisiana State University, where he emphasized the Trump administration’s position that schools at all levels need to open this fall. (Des Bieler) 

Way to go, Mike! And here I said nice things about you yesterday. You never fail to disappoint...

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	4,457	637
June 27	6,167	881
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
July 4	4,166	595
July 11	5,087	727
July 18	5,303	758
July 25	5,507	787
Month of July	23,002	742	96%
Total March – July	153,124

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 139,162

Increase in deaths since previous day: 915

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: 3,546,278

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 65,545  

Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 2%

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 14%

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 1,600,910

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 139,162

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 8%

For a discussion of what this number means – and why it’s so important – see this post. Short answer: If this percentage declines, that’s good. It’s been steadily declining since a high of 41% at the end of March. But a good number would be 2%, like South Korea’s. An OK number would be 4%, like China’s.

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