When will we be able to have pool parties?

The New York Times published an article yesterday about China and especially Wuhan – remember them? Where this all started? Remember the completely locked down city, and the thousands of masked people waiting in socially distanced lines to pick up the ashes of their loved ones – since they hadn’t even been allowed to do that at the height of the outbreak there?

At the top of the article, there’s a video of a very crowded pool party/concert in Wuhan this month. Nobody is wearing a mask; everyone’s having a good time. How can the government possibly allow this, knowing that just a few infected people could turn this into a superspreader event – just like the huge lunar new year party (40,000 people) in Wuhan in January, which was blamed for making the outbreak much worse there?

Moreover, the article is filled with pictures of maskless people at big outdoor gatherings throughout China; the only picture in which every person is wearing a mask and socially distanced is of an indoor movie theater.

How can China allow this? It’s easy:

1.      They have more than enough testing capacity to keep the virus completely under control. Just a month ago, the government tested the entire population of Wuhan (6 million people) to confirm that the vaccine had stopped spreading there.

2.      In fact, China as a whole had no local transmissions of the virus in the last seven days; there were 12 new cases, but they were all in people who came from abroad. Of course, the only way that China could be certain enough about these numbers to allow gatherings like the ones in the pictures is if they have massive testing and contact tracing.

When will the US be able to have gatherings like these? Of course, there have been more than a few in recent months – but they’ve all been widely condemned, and in most cases have been associated with an uptick in positive tests in the city where they were held (e.g. Trump’s rally in Tulsa). We will never be able to have gatherings like these unless there’s massive testing and contact tracing available, universal mask wearing, and isolation of infected people away from their families – and until there is an administration that decides they want to be part of the solution, rather than be a big contributing factor to the problem. It will be a long time ‘til January 20.

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	7,678	1,097
Month of August	32,126	1,036	121%
September 5	8,005	1,144
September 12	8,346	1,192
September 19	8,702	1,243
September 26	9,073	1,296
Month of Sept.	36,211	1,207	113%
Total March – September	225,108

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 181,177

Deaths reported yesterday: 572

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: 5,916,089

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 41,731

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: 3,218,514

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 181,177

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: 6.1%

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