Spinning out of control

Last week, Kellyanne Conway said "The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who's best on public safety and law and order.” This has to go down as a low point in American political history, where a presidential adviser states that anarchy and violence are a good thing because they help her party.

But, as Trump says, “It is what it is.” The fact is that there is violence and anarchy. They need to be controlled, since we don’t want to live in such a country, period. And Kellyanne (who has always been so helpful in explaining the administration’s actions with a clear, unvarnished perspective – starting when she announced the advent of “alternative facts” early in the administration) has made it clear that it will be harmful to Trump’s re-election prospects if the violence ends. What more encouragement should we need to end it? I suggest:

1.      The governors of both states should take up Trump’s offer to deploy the national guard in sufficient numbers to quell the violence in both Portland and Kenosha.

2.      Any carrying of guns outside of the home – let alone AR-15s! – should be banned in both cities. Open or concealed.

3.      Peaceful demonstrations should continue, but different protesting groups should be completely separated.

4.      Anyone violating these rules should be punished to the full extent of the law.

What would help would be a bipartisan effort in Congress to bring the situation under control, since the president has made clear he not only won’t do that, he’ll exacerbate the problem. And this will mean at least some Republican Senators making clear to Trump – by pushing and voting for this measure – that they’re tired of his disruption. It’s just amazing that they currently seem determined to go down with the Trump ship in November, no matter what Trump does between now and then.

While they’re at it, they might also pass a new bipartisan pandemic response bill, which will without a doubt help a few endangered GOP Senators in the election. Trump might veto either or both of these bills, and those vetoes probably won’t be overridden. But at least the American people will understand who stands where in the fight against violence and the pandemic.

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	6,971	996
Month of July	26,649	860	111%
August 1	8,069	1,153
August 8	7,153	1,022
August 15	7,556	1,079
August 22	7,552	1,079
August 29	6,675	954
Month of August	31,048	1,002	117%
September 5	6,851	979
September 12	7,102	1,015
September 19	7,363	1,052
September 26	7,633	1,090
Month of Sept.	30,802	1,027	99%
Total March – September	218,621

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 187,227

Deaths reported yesterday: 370

Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 4% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above; it was 4% 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: 6,175,008

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 35,541

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 5%  

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 3,425,814

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 187,227

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 5%

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.

IV. 7-day average of test positive rate for US: 5.8%

For comparison, the recent peak for this rate was 27% in late July, although the peak in late March was 75%. This is published by Johns Hopkins (recent rates for New York state: .8%. For Texas: 15.8%. For Florida: 14.5%.  For Arizona: 8.6%).

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com