Mitch, it’s (past) time for you to step up!

I hate to say this, Senator McConnell, but you’re the only one who might be able to save us at this point. Here’s the problem: There’s no chance Trump will be re-elected, but even then he still has more than 100 days left in office. And from all appearances it looks like he’s hell-bent on a course that will end up trashing the country even more than it already has been, and may result in absolute disaster if there’s a second wave of Covid-19 in the fall.

The thing Trump wants the most is for the economy to recover, or at least for people to believe it’s recovering. But his “solutions” are guaranteed not only to fail, but to make things much worse than they already are. And there’s no better example of this than schools.

He wants all kids in school five days a week. Of course, he says he’s concerned about their development if they’re not in school, and he’s right – not being in school so long is damaging to children. But he also doesn’t want any school districts to do partial solutions such as New York City’s, where the kids will be in classrooms 2-3 days every week – meaning that all students will be in a classroom five days every two weeks. Of course, that’s the only way NYC can come close to opening the schools, since there’s no way they could have the same number of kids in a classroom now, while still at least trying to protect their health.

But Trump doesn’t want anything less than five days a week of schooling, week in and week out. Why is he so concerned about this? Because otherwise, most parents of school-age children won’t be able to work full time, since they’ll have kids at home 2-3 days a week. But let’s assume he got his way (which of course he won’t), and most districts nationwide took his advice to ignore the CDC’s guidelines and packed the kids in schools every day, while Covid-19 cases in most states are rising (if not skyrocketing).

Schools will immediately start closing left and right, since if there’s just one case in a classroom, the whole class (if not a good portion of the school) will have to be sent home for two weeks to quarantine. When this starts happening regularly, parents will get spooked and demand the schools close again. So of course, those parents won’t be able to work again.

And of course there's another problem: teachers. Many of them are older people, and they'll be quite scared of being in a classroom where kids aren't socially distanced, and where at any moment a few of them might be asymptomatically infected, due to the virus spreading rapidly in the community. And even some younger teachers will probably refuse to go back to business as usual, no matter what the school district might want (this is where unions really come in handy!).

This result could be avoided if the schools reopened in a careful, controlled way – but of course that will mean admitting that a large swath of the adult population just won’t be available for full-time work at all. Or at least, until the virus is finally brought under control.

What do we need to control the virus? We need to do the stuff we were supposed to be doing from the start: wearing masks, building up adequate testing capacity (and supplies), deploying an army of contact tracers, renting empty hotels to serve as isolation facilities for people who test positive, etc. Experts have been saying this all along, but Trump’s response has been to a) ignore and publicly trash the experts (as he’s currently doing with Dr. Fauci); b) say these are all the states’ responsibilities, when the biggest problem has always been that there was no coordinated national response; and c) enforce the following message: 1) Everything is going well. 2) If things aren’t going well, see number 1.

And looming over this is the real possibility that there will be a fall wave (we’re still in the spring wave, of course) that will combine with the normal flu season to completely overwhelm hospitals nationwide, perhaps leading to much higher death counts than we’ve seen so far. Since we’re not able to handle the disaster we have on our hands now, we clearly won’t be able to if the second wave hits.

Mitch, you need to a) if it’s a nice day, leave early and walk down Pennsylvania Avenue (with a mask, of course), b) turn right when you see the big white building in front of you and go around to the entrance on 17^th St., c) ask if you can see Mr. Trump, and d) sit down with him and give him the following message: “Every day you remain in charge of this country’s coronavirus response is another day not only wasted, but going backwards. We want you to announce that from now on, Drs. Fauci, Birx and Redfield are in charge of the entire coronavirus response. You will ratify whatever they agree on and give it the full power of the Presidency; moreover, you will do your best to rally public support for whatever they agree on. And you will cease all communication, through Twitter or otherwise, that in any way undermines what they say. If these terms aren’t acceptable to you, you should resign and let Mike Pence take over. Oh, and if resignation isn't acceptable, you have your choice of impeachment (irony alert!) or the 25th amendment."

At least Pence’s basic instincts seem good. He’s hardly the one to lead the country out of the swamp it’s stuck in now, but maybe he at least won’t continue our headlong plunge into it. Anything to get us through the next 100 days without destroying both hundreds of thousands more lives and the economy to boot.

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	5,428	775
July 25	5,643	806
Month of July	23,407	755	98%
Total March – July	153,529

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 138,247

Increase in deaths since previous day: 460

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: 3,479,650

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: 1,549,624

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 138,247

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