Things are going great!

Various observations and things I read yesterday:

1. The seven-day rate of increase in total Covid-19 cases is now at 13%, after reaching an all-time low of 8% in mid-June. The 7-day rate of increase in total deaths is now back up to 5%, after about nine days at its all-time low of 4% just a week ago. My total projected deaths March through July are now 166,000, vs. 150,000 on June 24. Of course, given the way new cases are rising, it’s unlikely this rate will stay at 5% very long, meaning the number will continue to rise.
2. Dr. Fauci estimated that new cases could reach 100,000 a day soon. To put that in perspective, since total cases have doubled in the last 1 ½ months, this means that soon we may be doubling total cases every month or even more quickly. And since deaths are some ratio to cases, this means total new deaths (which were 24,000 in June) may double every month as well. What can prevent this from happening? I think it will require lockdowns in the states that are experiencing explosive growth in cases (which are roughly the states along Interstate 10, whereas the April explosive growth was roughly in states along I-80. Neat, huh?). Won’t testing, contact tracing, isolation and mask use stop the growth? They would if they were available (or practiced, in the case of mask use) in numbers that are anywhere near adequate. But they’re not. If people have to wait six hours to be tested in Florida and Doctors without Borders has to give migrant farmworkers in Florida their first tests because nobody else will do it, we have a long way to go on these fronts, despite repeated assurances otherwise.
3. Goldman Sachs projects that a nationwide mask mandate could increase GDP by 5%. They don’t say this because it would save X lives and they’re assigning a value Y to each life. They’re saying it because universal mask wearing would obviate the coming need for wide lockdowns in some states. Of course, this would require real leadership from the White House, and the idea that they will turn 180 degrees and require universal mask wearing is fantasy at this point (see item 6 below). This means that renewed lockdowns in some states are probably inevitable, since having cases and deaths double every month (at least) is probably beyond what even the Wall Street Journal considers an “acceptable” level of death – and it will be especially unacceptable in the states where so many people are dying!
4. Covid Air – excuse me, I meant American Airlines – announced they’ll start filling the middle seat on flights again. This is Darwinian natural selection at work: What better way to ensure the long-term health of your organization than by ensuring the deaths of some of your most loyal customers! They should make this into a Harvard case study.
5. Trump’s biggest response to the health crisis so far has been to ask the Supreme Court to completely repeal Obamacare, even though he didn’t have to do it – which would cause 27 million Americans to lose their health care in the middle of the pandemic. This makes perfect sense in Trump’s way of seeing the world. If reducing testing will reduce the number of infections, then cutting off health care altogether will protect those people from illness. But don’t worry: He gets tested for free every day, in the same place where he lives and works. And he has access to the best government-paid healthcare.
6. Kevin Perry pointed out this news article to me yesterday, about the fact that the Nebraska governor has said he will withhold CARES Act funds from any county that tries to enforce a mandatory mask regulation. I swear I’m not making this up.
7. Finally, I regret to say that I underestimated our president’s resolve to show resolve. In this recent post, I pointed out that Peter Navarro, one of his staff members, had said Trump was “only joking” when he stated at the Tulsa rally that he had told the government to slow down Covid-19 testing, since too many positive cases were being reported. While I knew Trump wasn’t joking (he’d said things like this before), I also believed that he wouldn’t deliberately slow testing down – just not encourage it too much, as he’s been doing all along. However, a few days later the administration announced it would close the last 13 of 41 federal testing sites, even though there are still billions in unspent funds for testing, that were approved by Congress and Trump in the most recent coronavirus response act. And seven of those sites are in – get this – Texas. At least no one can accuse him of discrimination against states that didn’t vote for him in 2016! He’s an equal opportunity discriminator.

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 5%.

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	6,899	986
July 11	7,270	1,039
July 18	7,661	1,094
July 25	8,074	1,153
Month of July	35,788	1,154	150%
Total March – July	165,910

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 130,123

Increase in deaths since previous day: 1,304

Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 5% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above; it was 5% 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: 2,637,180

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 40,409

Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 2%

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 12%

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 1,143,490

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 130,123

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 10% (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 41% at the end of March.

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com