The feds have surrendered to Covid; it’s up to Congress and the states to take the lead

What’s been really remarkable about the maneuvering in Congress and the White House ahead of the new relief bill is the fact that the WH and Republican leaders in the Senate have been so out of step with each other, and with themselves. I’d say there are about four or five different Republican positions now, but there’s one way to sum them up: They all assume that a) the US is on the path to recovery, and just needs a modest amount of help to continue; and b) there is nothing much that the federal government can do now to stem the pandemic in the US, pending a vaccine being available.

In other words, things just have to take their course on the epidemiological front; there’s not a lot the Feds can do other than throw gobs of money at accelerating the development of a safe and effective vaccine. All the talk about mask wearing, testing, contact tracing, quarantining…Sure, sure. These are all good things. We’re doing everything we can, given political limitations, to make them happen. But if these things aren’t happening quickly enough for you – and especially if they’re not happening quickly enough to prevent the virus from continuing to spread uncontrollably in some states – well, we’re doing our best. It’s really up to the states to do all of these things. We’ll do everything we can to help them – except provide the money they need, of course.

In other words, the Feds have surrendered on containing the pandemic – which takes hard work, after all – and decided to put their big bets on the hope that a knight in shining armor will ride out of the clouds and slay the monster once and for all. The best evidence for this is on testing, where we’re not only not making progress, we’re rapidly losing ground, as huge delays in returning results from the two big commercial labs pretty much make contact tracing and quarantining a waste of time – we might as well just have the people who are doing those things go to work building more crematories, which will definitely be needed. Yet the administration doesn’t do some of the things that could really help – like enlisting a lot of university labs to cut down reliance on the commercial labs.

While the Feds have gone fishing, the states clearly aren’t succeeding in containing the pandemic, let alone crushing it. And crushing the pandemic is absolutely the prerequisite – have I mentioned this before? – for getting the economy growing again. Some states are doing well but most aren’t, and in any case none of them can really do what needs to be done entirely on their own.

But my hopes were raised by an op-ed in WaPo this morning that points out that the costs for standing up the state-based programs we really need – widespread testing, contact tracing, and isolation of infected people – would be a mere $75 billion – which seems dirt cheap compared to everything else we need. But the point is not just to divide that sum up among all 50 states and tell them to have fun.

The states should be encouraged to set up regional alliances to coordinate these activities, especially regarding ensuring adequate testing is available. And this encouragement should take the form of financial incentives built into the new relief bill – so the states would get more aid if they joined a regional alliance. In fact, Sen. Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and a medical doctor, has drawn up a bill to do exactly this, which the author of the op-ed says looks like an excellent start.

Of course, in an ideal world we would have a federal government that was working smoothly and consistently to defeat the coronavirus, as opposed to one where a lot of competent people have their efforts continually undercut by a president who believes that the day-to-day work of fighting the virus won’t help him achieve his overriding goal: getting re-elected. That goal recedes in likelihood every day, yet he instead doubles down and deliberately undermines the good work others are doing. We can’t wait until January 20 to do something about the pandemic. If the Feds are AWOL, then the states need to band together and do what they can. It seems they might be able to do a lot, were the required funds available. Otherwise, we’ll all just have to hope that knight in shining armor appears soon.

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	8,319	1,188
August 15	8,757	1,251
August 22	9,218	1,317
August 29	9,704	1,386
Month of August	38,447	1,240	144%
Total March – August	195,218

 Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 158,375

Deaths reported yesterday: 454

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: 4,813,984

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 48,829

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: 2,380,548

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 158,375

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