A self-inflicted wound



I’ve extended the projected deaths through the end of August. As usual, the projections are based entirely on the assumption that the current 7-day growth rate of new deaths – 4% - continues into the future. Unfortunately, given that daily new cases have increased by about 40% since two weeks ago, one would expect new deaths will increase at a faster rate soon.

However, I just looked back at my projections a month ago on June 18. Then, when the 7-day growth rate in new deaths was also 4%, I expected 802 deaths per day in July – even though we had “just” 29,000 new cases that day. Today, I’m saying July will have 753 deaths per day, even though we had 73,000 new cases yesterday.

In other words, the case fatality rate (roughly the ratio of new deaths to new cases) has obviously fallen significantly, which is of course good news. That rate can’t be measured accurately until the pandemic is over, but the best proxy is total deaths so far as a percentage of total closed cases (deaths plus recoveries), which I track at the very bottom of this page. On June 19th, that was 11%. Today it’s 8%, and it looks like it can continue to fall. I certainly hope it does continue to fall. Perhaps in August we can end up with fewer deaths per day than July, even though daily new cases are now significantly higher.

What this goes to show, though, is that we would be doing much better if our daily new cases had stayed at the 20-25,000 per day level that they were at all of May and the first half of June. Then, assuming the case fatality rate also continued to decline as it has, we would be talking about significantly lower deaths per day in July and August, probably 50% lower. Then Europe and (especially) Asia wouldn’t be looking at us in absolute horror, as they are now. They’d be saying “Well, it took the US a while, but they seem to finally be getting the virus under control. Maybe we can start think about letting them visit our countries again.”

As it is, there are only about 12 countries in the world that will let in people coming from the US (although here’s the good news: Brazil is still glad to have us!). And I’ve heard that Vietnamese citizens living in the US aren’t even being allowed to return to Vietnam (quarantine or no). This isn’t an explicit policy, but it seems there are simply no flights to be had to get into Vietnam nowadays. Of course, with less than 300 cases and no deaths at all – and a hospital infrastructure that would be absolutely overwhelmed if that were to change significantly – Vietnam has to make some really brutal choices. We, on the other hand, made the wrong choices of our own volition!

This was an entirely self-inflicted wound.


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
 5,411
773

July 25
 5,625
804

Month of July
23,352
753
97%
August 1
5,846
835

August 8
6,076
868

August 15
6,316
902

August 22
6,564
938

August 29
6,823
975

Month of August
27,695
893
119%
Total March – August
181,169



I. Total deaths
Total US deaths as of yesterday: 142,065
Increase in deaths since previous day: 935
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: 3,770,138
Increase in reported cases since previous day: 73,997
Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 2%
Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 15% (vs. 15% yesterday)

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:
Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 1,741,398
Total Deaths as of yesterday: 142,065
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

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