Lies and damnable lies

Of course, the idea that President Trump and his allies tell lies constantly isn’t anything new. However, it still appalls me that they tell lies that will literally lead to more people getting sick with Covid-19, and some of them dying – and it’s doubly amazing when those people are children. Two really egregious examples of this occurred in the last two days.

From yesterday’s Washington Post: “White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked Tuesday about the experience of Israel, where some schools that opened have closed because of a surge in coronavirus cases. She replied by quoting Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who said last week that children need to return to school, but omitting his cautions about doing so safely.”

And from CNN yesterday: “President Trump argued on Wednesday that children should return to US schools because they’re “almost” or “virtually immune” from the coronavirus. Even though children are less susceptible to the virus, they can still transmit it to others in their household or within their communities.”  

“If you look at children, children are almost — I would almost say definitely — but almost immune from this disease. So few — they’ve gotten stronger. Hard to believe. I don’t know how you feel about it, but they have much stronger immune systems than we do, somehow, for this. And they don’t have a problem. They just don’t have a problem,” Trump said.”

What else can this be but a deliberate attempt to persuade parents to put their kids back in school, completely disregarding these facts:

1.      According to a June story in Stat, children aged 5-9 are less likely to get infected, although the rate certainly isn’t zero. If they do become infected, they’re unlikely to have severe symptoms or die, but they can still easily pass the disease to their family members.

2.      Children and teenagers ages 10-19 are just as likely to become infected as adults. While they also experience much lower rates of serious symptoms, they can easily spread the disease to others. In fact, because teenagers are so socially active, they’re more likely to spread the disease than an adult.

If anything, McEnany’s lie is worse than Trump’s, since she didn’t even try to hedge it – which she could easily have done by simply quoting Dr. Redfield’s full statement. But this is a distinction without a difference: Far more people are likely to believe Trump than McEnany. Again, people will die because of these lies, and the many others that Trump and the White House have told.

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	7,974	1,139
August 15	8,377	1,197
August 22	8,800	1,257
August 29	9,244	1,321
Month of August	36,819	1,188	138%
Total March – August	193,590

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 161,608

Deaths reported yesterday: 1,282

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: 4,973,741

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 54,952

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: 2,540,880

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 161,608

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