We’re moving all right. Just not moving forward.

The Washington Post published an important editorial on Friday, that I just read today. Unfortunately, nothing happened yesterday that would change its message. The editorial is titled “Our pandemic response is stalling. And it’s made worse by Trump’s ignorance.”  And if there was ever an editorial, the content of which exactly matched the headline, this is it. The only thing I disagree with is the use of the word “stalling”. Since the coronavirus is progressing quite nicely, thank you, the fact that our efforts to contain it aren’t even progressing at the same rate means we’re falling behind daily. However, that’s nothing new. There are very few days – if any – since the beginning of the pandemic that the US hasn’t been losing ground against it.

You should read the editorial, but one thing that jumped out at me was: We’re doing 640,000 tests a day, which Trump is trumpeting (pun intended) as a great effort, and of course all due to him; this is certainly a huge increase from say two months ago. But of course, the problem is that the number of cases to be tested is still growing faster than testing capacity (and availability of the needed supplies), which is why there are huge lines for testing in states like Arizona and Florida, and people are waiting days – and in some cases weeks – to get the results.

Remember, someone who has been tested but doesn’t know the outcome – and doesn’t have symptoms – is very unlikely to self-quarantine if they weren’t doing that already. So they’re still walking around, infecting people left and right. The editorial says we would need 1.6 million tests a day to actually get the virus in check – and of course that number will rise with every day that the virus has been spreading unchecked (which is of course every day since the first person in the US was infected, probably in January and maybe in December. We’ve never had the virus in check for a single day yet).

But even 1.6 million tests a day isn’t enough if we want to get the economy moving again, which of course requires that we test workers regularly. I know one critical workplace – a major control center for the electric grid, which controls the grid in most of a large state – where the workers are being tested once a week. Three weeks a month, the test is an antibody test, which provides results in about five minutes. The fourth week is a regular PCR test, which requires 1-2 days for a result, since the swab has to go to an outside lab to be tested.

I’m sure this workplace was able to get such good access to testing because of their criticality for the whole economy in one state. But if people are going to come back to work and feel safe anywhere – office, meat packing plant, whatever - they’re going to need a testing regime like this. And this is especially true for one workplace: schools.

Much has been made of the fact that children (mainly elementary school age children) don’t easily catch Covid-19, and also don’t easily spread it (unfortunately, this isn’t true for older kids. There have been outbreaks in high schools in Europe). But here’s the problem: To reopen schools (even following safety guidelines), you not only need parents to feel safe sending their kids to school, but you need teachers to feel safe teaching them. And that means regular testing for both adults and children in the schools.

Bottom line: the editorial doesn’t even try to estimate the level of testing that will be required to get the schools open (even partially. The idea of fully reopening schools in September is obviously somebody’s opioid dream), but it’s clearly millions of tests a day. And the economy will never fully reopen unless the schools are open – safely.

Once again: You want to fix the economy? First fix the virus. We’ll never fix the economy before the virus is defeated. And inoculating the whole population to the point where it is defeated is without a doubt years away, assuming that we ever have a safe and effective vaccine.

But other than that, things look great on the economic front!

The 7-day growth rate in total deaths declined almost steadily from a high of 641% on March 28 (meaning total deaths were almost doubling every day) and reached 3% on July 3. It stayed at that level until yesterday, when it went up to 4%. I’m certainly not looking for it to go back down anytime soon, and with the daily new case numbers now at close to three times what they were 30 days ago, it’s hard to see why that percentage wouldn’t go above 4% soon.

The projected deaths numbers still haven’t risen too much from their low a couple weeks ago, but they’ll keep going up with the 7-day rate, since that’s what they’re based on. I will regard it as exceptionally good news – for now anyway – if that rate doesn’t go above 4%, and later starts declining again. But that’s going to require measures like those discussed above.

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 3%.

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	5,283	755
July 25	5,486	784
Month of July	22,937	740	96%
Total March – July	153,059

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 137,405

Increase in deaths since previous day: 723

Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 4% (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: 3,355,895

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 63,638  

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: 1,490,702

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 137,405

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