An encouraging development
Hello to my (new) friends in Romania!
I had a huge number of hits within a 3-hour period yesterday afternoon from
Romania, where people seemed to be reading a number of my recent posts. I’m glad
to see this, of course, and I hope you’ll continue to read - but I’m a little
mystified by this. If somebody could drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com and explain this to me, I
would appreciate it.
If you just read my posts in the email
feed, you missed the one I put up on Friday, since I mistakenly put yesterday’s
post up before the feed came out. If you’d like to read Friday’s post, go here.
I’m again omitting
my usual table of projected deaths today. Reported deaths were exceptionally
low on Friday, and yesterday’s reported number was the lowest since March 23. I’d
like to think this is good news, but I think the July 4 weekend has abnormally
depressed reporting of deaths. Of course,the numbers always go down during the
weekend and on Monday since many state and local reporting offices are closed,
but I think the number of closed offices may be abnormally high this weekend. I’m
going to wait until Tuesday or Wednesday to project deaths again. I don’t want
to be proclaiming great news today, then in mid-week sheepishly acknowledging I’ve
been (once again) misled by a statistical fluke.
Of course,
the actual numbers below are all updated. There is one change that seems to be
unambiguously good: The ratio of deaths so far to total closed cases so far (closed
cases equals deaths plus recoveries) has just dropped to 9% - meaning that an
increasing percentage of cases are ending with recovery, not death. I first
started reporting that on March 26, when it was 41%. It stayed in the range of
35% to 43% until April 24, when it started a steady decline to its current
level – hopefully, that will continue.
Why is this
number important? Because it shows the percentage of cases of Covid-19 that
result in death vs. recovery. The fact that this is going down – and will
hopefully continue to go down – could indicate that hospitals aren’t overcrowded
now (although that idea is being tested now in Florida, Texas and Arizona), as
well as that the medical profession is getting better at preventing Covid
patients from dying.
On the other
hand, this number is still high relative to other countries like South Korea, where
it’s 2%. And it’s especially high relative to Vietnam, where, with 355 cases so
far, they have 0 deaths – meaning their rate is 0%. Unfortunately, it’s
impossible for us to reach 0%, and we could only hit 2% if we had an
astronomical increase in cases (as opposed to the merely humungous increase
that we’re having now). Of course, having a lot of cases is a bad thing in
itself, since just being hospitalized with Covid-19 can be a terrible and
financially devastating experience, as a medical worker pointed out in this
recent post). But we can certainly do even better than 9%.
I. Total
deaths
Total US deaths as of yesterday: 132,318
Increase in deaths since previous day: 211
Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 3% (This number
is used to project deaths in the table above; it was 3% 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: 2,936,122
Increase in reported cases since previous day: 44,894
Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 2%
Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 13%
III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far
in the US:
Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 1,260,619
Total Deaths as of yesterday: 132,318
Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 9% (vs.
10% yesterday)
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 44% in mid-April.
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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