A very sad fact

There were 860 Covid-19 deaths per day in June, up from 798 in June. If you just started paying attention to the pandemic today, you would be excused if you said something like “Well, the virus seems to be in a holding pattern now.” However, just about three weeks ago on July 8, I projected deaths per day for July to be 594, because at the time the 7-day rate of increase in total deaths was 3%, the lowest it had been since April.

To provide some context, from March 28, when deaths were increasing at a 7-day rate of 641% (which is close to 100% per day, meaning new deaths were almost doubling every day), through around three weeks ago, the rate fell continually. But on July 11, it went up to 4% and today it stands at 5%.

Again, if you had just started reading about the pandemic today, you would say “Well, even 5% is a lot better than 641%. We should be cheering, not crying.” But remember that this virus grows exponentially, meaning that it grows by some factor of the current total – and that fact is true whether the growth rate is 641% (meaning the factor is 6.41) or 5% (meaning the factor is .05).

And here’s the kicker: On March 28, there were 2,229 total deaths so far, and new deaths on that day were 533. This was shocking because it meant that in one day total deaths grew by one quarter. Yesterday, total deaths stood at 156,772, so the 1,466 new deaths amounted to .9% of total deaths. So even though the rate of increase has fallen so sharply since March 28, deaths per day are three times higher, because the base number is 70 times larger now than then.

My guess is that the families of the 1,466 people who died yesterday aren’t doing high fives (or elbow bumps, anyway) over the fact that the growth rate is so much lower – their relatives are dead either way. Moreover, had deaths continued to increase at 641% per week after March 28, none of these families would still have been around to celebrate – or to mourn – since the entire US population would have been dead by early May.

If the rest of the world were doing worse than the US is, then we could at least look smugly at them and say, “Nobody has gotten this right.” But as we all know, the US leads the world in both deaths and cases, and we’re one of the worst per capita. There are currently only 22 countries that will allow Americans to come in at all, and all of them require at least a recent negative Covid test, while some of these (like the UK) require a quarantine of up to 14 days after arrival.

So even if the 7-day rate of increase in deaths stays at 5%, we’ll probably never be welcome in any other countries beyond these 22 – unless they lose control of the virus like we have and give up on even trying to protect their citizens, as at least our federal government seems to have done. But even that fact that we're international pariahs will seem almost inconsequential compared to the huge long-term damage we'll due to our society, our children (and grandchildren) and our economy if we don't get the virus under control very soon. To say nothing of the huge additional number of people that will die or be permanently impaired by Covid-19.

But don’t worry, whenever you want to go to Brazil, you’ll certainly be welcome there!


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
4,166
 595

July 11
5,087
727

July 18
 5,476
782

July 25
 6,971
996

Month of July
26,649
860
111%
August 1
7,394
1,056

August 8
7,759
1,108

August 15
8,142
1,163

August 22
8,544
1,221

August 29
8,965
1,281

Month of August
35,377
1,141
133%
Total March – August
192,148


Red = projected numbers 

I. Total deaths
Total US deaths as of yesterday: 155,306
Deaths reported yesterday: 1,466
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% two days ago. 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: 4,635,226
Increase in reported cases since previous day: 67,189
Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 9%  

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:
Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 2,285,613
Total Deaths as of yesterday: 155,306
Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 6%
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

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