Trump acts decisively to protect convention-goers! Schoolkids? Not so much…

President Trump on Thursday announced that he was cancelling the upcoming RNC convention in Jacksonville, Florida. While presumably keeping a straight face, he stated his reason for doing this: "I looked at my team and I said the timing for this event is not right. It's just not right. To have a big convention, it's not the right time.” Also, “There's nothing more important in our country than keeping our people safe.” This was quoted from CNN.

Of course, I was quite pleased to see this happen, since the convention was clearly going to turn into a disaster for the city of Jacksonville, along with the Trump campaign, of course. I had earlier christened this event CovidFest 2020, although I had recently come to prefer SuperSpreader 2020 – just my little quirk, I guess.

But I also expected Trump, since he’s now insisting there’s nothing more important than keeping our people safe, to immediately act decisively to protect schoolchildren as well. After all, he’s been insisting that schools have to be open to all students this fall, despite the risks. And Betsy DeVos (always very helpful in her own right) has pointed out that everything worth doing carries risks, citing US astronauts who didn’t let three space disasters – which left about 20 dead astronauts - stop them from pursuing their mission. Why should sending kids back to school be any different?

Of course, I completely agree with her position. I have often felt that it’s time that 6- and 7-year-old kids be forced to face the fact that it’s a cold, unfeeling world out there, where only the strongest will survive. By going back to school in the middle of a pandemic (with cases rising in 40 states), they’ll be learning the valuable lesson that sometimes it’s worth endangering your own life if it’s for a good cause, which is…hmm, I’m not sure I remember what the good cause is. Trump’s re-election, perhaps? Standing up to China? The war with antifa? Protecting Confederate statues? Perhaps all of these things?

But on Thursday Trump stated the most important consideration was protecting lives, in this case those of Republican convention delegates and organizers, the press, workers at Jacksonville hotels and restaurants, etc. So I naturally expected he’d also change his tune on schoolkids, saying that the most important consideration should be not fully reopening schools, but protecting kids’ physical health, even though there’s no dispute that not reopening schools will damage them in other ways, like social and emotional development, let alone cognitive development. Unfortunately, if a child dies, nobody will be concerned at that point about their social or emotional development, let alone cognitive development.

Thus, I was very surprised when on Friday the CDC released its revised guidelines for school reopening (the CDC revised them because the previous guidelines were too “harsh” for Trump’s taste when first released a couple weeks ago. Of course, this fact alone is significant: Even two weeks ago, Trump was taking sides with the kids against the evil CDC that’s seeking to force them to take cruel measures like mask wearing and social distancing while in school. Why, they might even force the kids to take regular Covid tests! We all know how kids love taking tests…).

But guess what the new title is for the CDC guidelines? “The Importance of Reopening America’s Schools this Fall”! And Mike Pence (who is also always quite helpful, of course) emphasized this point on Friday when he said that reopening schools (quoting from the Chicago Tribune) “is the best thing for our kids” and “also the best thing for working families”. The Trib continued, “Deputy Education Secretary Mitchell Zais, a member of the coronavirus task force, called teachers essential workers and said schools will be ‘stronger and more student focused than ever before.’” I think it’s quite significant that Mr. Zais called teachers essential workers. That means the Trump administration – and especially OSHA – will fight as tirelessly to protect their health as it has other groups it has declared to be essential workers, including workers in meatpacking plants. I’m sure the teachers were comforted to hear these words.

So it seems like the president’s concern with protecting the health of GOP convention-goers doesn’t also extend to schoolchildren or teachers. Who would have thought?

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	7,483	1,069
Month of July	27,212	878	114%
August 1	7,875	1,125
August 8	8,287	1,184
August 15	8,721	1,246
August 22	9,178	1,311
August 29	9,658	1,380
Month of August	38,083	1,228	140%
Total March – August	195,416

Projected numbers in red

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 148,521

Deaths reported yesterday: 1,179

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: 4,249,584

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 79,521

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: 2,028,361

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 148,521

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