The “personal responsibility” canard

I just heard an interview on NPR with Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota. I hadn’t heard her speak before, but now that I have, I think she might well be the GOP nominee in 2024. She certainly overwhelmed the interviewer, who I believe was Steve Inskeep.

Steve was asking her about her refusal so far to take steps like require masks, and she pushed back that the state’s focus was on giving the people all the facts and letting them make their own decisions. Steve then asked about the Sturgis, SD motorcycle rally, which drew almost half a million people from all over the country (and cell phone data indicate that 61% of counties in the US have been visited by someone who was at the rally, according to this story in CNN, which was forwarded to me by Kevin Perry. At least 70 cases have been identified so far in people who attended the rally).

Steve pointed out that eight states have identified outbreaks tied to people who attended the rally – i.e. meaning they came back and infected other people. She went back to her spiel about individual rights, pointing out that the people knew the risks and attended and had fun, implying that it was just another risk-based decision like whether to cross a busy street or not.

That might be true were the novel coronavirus not so contagious and deadly. The problem is that the people who will get infected because of someone who attended the rally weren’t given any choice in the matter – they didn’t realize the person they were interacting with might be infected, since I don’t think all half a million people who were there walk around with a big sign on their back saying “I was at the Sturgis Rally!”).

More generally, anytime the right to "personal choice" is trotted out as a reason for a government not to take precautions against Covid-19 infections, it should be swatted down: Nobody has the right to endanger other people, period. The town of Sturgis – and certainly the state of South Dakota – took no meaningful steps at all to try to protect people at the rally, letting them crowd into huge bars without any masks or social distancing. The rest of the country will likely pay a big price for this huge concern for “freedom of choice” for 500,000 individuals – over the rights of many more individuals who were given no choice at all.

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	7,470	1,067
Month of August	31,917	1,030	120%
September 5	7,780	1,111
September 12	8,103	1,158
September 19	8,438	1,205
September 26	8,788	1,255
Month of Sept.	35,060	1,169	111%
Total March – September	223,747

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 183,677

Deaths reported yesterday: 1,266

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: 6,001,103

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 44,943

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: 3,314,644

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 183,677

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: 5.9%

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