It’s looking like maybe it wasn’t such a hot idea to send the kids back to school so quickly. Who would have thought?

Five data points from the last two days that throw light on the idea that schools should reopen in full, whatever the state of the coronavirus in their region:

1.      North Spaulding High School in Georgia, which suspended (and rescinded the suspensions a day later) two students for posting pictures of hallways full of maskless students, reported yesterday that six students and three teachers had tested positive for Covid-19. The school will be all virtual today and tomorrow, as the administration reassesses the situation. Of course, this is a complete surprise. Who would have ever predicted that opening a high school – with minimal social distancing – in a region with rising cases would result in spreading the virus further?

2.      A new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association says that, in the last two weeks of July, 97,000 children in the US tested positive for Covid-19. In fact, given that the total number of child cases so far in the pandemic for the US is 338,000, this means more than a quarter of that number tested positive in those two weeks. Of course, this isn’t a particularly great sign for opening schools up in full. Presumably, the infected children will either be cured or quarantining when schools open, but as we all know, for every infected person that has tested positive, there are a huge number that actually have the disease, although usually asymptomatically (Dr. Redfield of the CDC estimated the actual number of cases is ten times the reported one). Of course, having all these infected kids out there, who will probably pass a temperature test when they come to school, will inevitably lead to a lot of school re-closings, as has already happened in North Spaulding and many other schools.

3.      I heard some expert say on NPR this morning that trying to enforce social distancing in a school with young kids is like trying to enforce a “no pee” zone in a swimming pool (OK, this isn’t really a data point).

4.      The WSJ reported yesterday that “Children might be more vulnerable to Covid-19 than once believed, with new research suggesting that they are able to contract and spread the virus, especially if they don’t take precautions such as wearing a mask.” This was based on analysis of outbreaks among children, like the one where a large majority of the kids at a summer camp in Georgia (at least 230 kids) got infected from what seems to have been just one camper. It is also based on the observation that kids can have much higher loads of the virus in their upper respiratory tracts than adults do, meaning they should be much more efficient spreaders. The article also displays a chart of about 13 countries that have reopened schools with at least some success, and lists numbers of daily cases per million population for each one. The highest of those numbers was for Denmark, which had 35 cases per million residents when they reopened (and they were an outlier. The next highest was Belgium at 25 cases). What’s the equivalent US number now? 170.

5.      But there is one piece of good news, which I’m sure you’ll be happy to hear: Donald Trump’s son Barron won’t have to go back to school for the time being, since the private school that he attends in Maryland has decided to be all-virtual, for reasons of child safety, of course. However, it doesn’t seem Barron’s father has absorbed the idea that perhaps other American parents might also be glad if their kids aren’t being sent to live in virus petri dishes for 6-8 hours a day.

I was wondering if there might be another reason that Barron’s school is going virtual. Think about this:

A.     The Secret Service (or whoever decides these things) has now decided that all White House personnel need to be tested every day, in order to protect the president.

B.     If Barron were to go to a school where all students and staff weren’t tested every day, then he might one day become infected, even asymptomatically, and bring it home to the White House. Since it’s very likely he sees his father every day that his father is in the White House, this means he would be the one gap in the Secret Service’s supposedly impenetrable shield.

C.      This means that, were Barron’s school to reopen, they would almost definitely need to test all staff and students every day. And of course, they would need to be very strict about mask wearing, social distancing, etc. And how successful will those measures be? See number 3 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 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	8,069	1,153
August 8	7,153	1,022
August 15	7,548	1,078
August 22	7,893	1,128
August 29	8,254	1,129
Month of August	33,328	1,179	125%
Total March – August	190,099

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 165,617

Deaths reported yesterday: 543

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: 5,199,524

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 49,464

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 8%  

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 2,664,849

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 165,617

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