A very bad day

Yesterday was the day I knew was probably coming, but it was still quite a shock when it happened. As everyone knows, new Covid-19 cases in the US have been surging for more than a month, and total cases are now over 4 million. It took the US almost two months (from March 1) to reach 1 million cases, 1 ½ months to reach 2 million, exactly 1 month to reach 3 million, and 15 days to reach 4 million. This is a little more than a quarter of total cases in the world.

Of course, it’s appalling that we’re even at this high a level of cases, but it’s even more appalling to see how the rate of increase is itself increasing. The 7-day rate of increase in total cases was at a low of 8% on June 18; as of yesterday, it was 15%. And the worst part about that is, since the number of cases is almost double today what it was on June 18, each 1% increase in cases now means 42,000 cases, vs. 22,000 on June 18. In other words, we were adding about 160,000 new cases every week on June 18. Now we’re adding 294,000 new cases every week. By contrast, the entire EU/EEA and UK have 1,656,000 cases so far.

However, I was most appalled by the new deaths number, which pushed the 7-day rate of increase to 5%, as it climbs back from a long spell at 3%, which ended on July 10. If you look at my projected deaths numbers (which are simply based on growing total deaths by the current 7-day rate of increase), they’ve jumped to 37,000 for August, vs. 31,000 as I was projecting yesterday, based on a 4% rate. I know both the CDC and the IHME are both forecasting higher numbers – of course, they’re looking at real factors like the growth in cases and hospitalizations, while I’m not.

The really worst part of this is that we need to be going fast in the other direction, in preparation for the onset of flu season, which will take up a lot of hospital beds, as well as the onset of colder weather, which will keep people indoors more and increase transmission.

Not a good day.

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	5,476	782
July 25	7,315	1,045
Month of July	26,861	866	112%
August 1	7,690	1,099
August 8	8,083	1,155
August 15	8,497	1,214
August 22	8,932	1,276
August 29	9,389	1,341
Month of August	37,130	1,198	1238%
Total March – August	194,112

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 147,342

Deaths reported yesterday: 2,384

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: 4,170,333

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 141,600

Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 2%

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 15%  

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 1,980,432

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 147,342

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 7%

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