Some sad numbers

Yesterday, the US passed the 4 million case mark and new cases – which had been down 14% since their peak five days ago – rose from 63,000 to 67,000. Since daily new cases are up about 150% from the 25,000 recorded a month ago, it was nice to think for a few days that maybe we were on our way back down to a more reasonable level. That isn’t happening yet, as yesterday showed.

On the deaths front, my projections below show that, if deaths continue growing at 4% every seven days, as they have been since July 11, we will have almost exactly the same number of deaths per day in July as in June. You can see in the table that deaths per day in June were only 57% of the same number in May. I had originally hoped that trend would continue, and deaths in July would be lower than in June; it’s obviously reversed. Even if the 7-day rate of increase in total deaths doesn’t go up from 4%, we’ll still be at a total of 184,000 total pandemic deaths at the end of August; 217,000 at the end of September; etc.

What are the consequences of not turning this around?

1.      Any talk of fully opening schools – and in many places, opening them at all – in the fall will be treated as a cruel joke in a few weeks. The same with talk of reopening restaurants and bars, etc. As well as many other workplaces.

2.      Americans will continue to be banned from all but about 20 countries, although that number will probably go down as we diverge further from the rest of the world. Even though you can’t visit anywhere in Europe other than the UK (which requires Americans to quarantine for 14 days) and no country at all in Asia, you’ll be pleased to know that you can still visit Belarus, Croatia, Ecuador, Kosovo, Lebanon, Tanzania and the Turks and Caicos.

3.      The economy won’t recover much if at all this year.

4.      If there’s a second wave in the fall (we’re still in the first one), the consequences could be much more deadly in that one, as was the case in the 1918 flu pandemic. This is because a lot of hospital capacity will also be needed for the annual seasonal flu wave. And we’ll have no more capability to bring that under control than we have to control the current spike in infections,  mainly because of a lack of – guess what! – adequate testing. Quest Diagnostics is already taking a week or more to provide a lot of results, and they’ve already announced they can’t expand capacity at all this fall, because of what they’ll need for flu sample testing.

Have a good day!

Breaking news: My wife, who is Vietnamese and in VIetnam now, just informed me that the first VIetnamese citizen has died of the virus. I asked whether that meant Vietnam now has its first death from Covid-19. She said no, he died in the US. Of course, since more than 1,000 people died of Covid in the US yesterday, I don't anticipate this will be news here.

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	5,951	850
Month of July	24,022	775	100%
August 1	6,199	886
August 8	6,457	922
August 15	6,726	961
August 22	7,006	1,001
August 29	7,298	1,043
Month of August	29,628	956	123%
Total March – August	183,772

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 144,958

Deaths reported yesterday: 1,094

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: 4,028,733

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 66,928

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: 1,886,778

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 144,958

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