You got to give Trump credit - he's consistent!

Three of the national numbers I track are slowly moving the right way. For example, the test positive rate keeps trending down. It’s at 5.9% now, vs. 8.5% at its July peak and 21.9% at its April peak. But we’re still averaging over 1,000 deaths a day, as you can see below.

But the one number that isn’t trending down now is probably the most important one – the number of daily new cases. It’s down from its peak of about 60,000 on August 14, and it hit a low of about 33,000 on August 23. Since then, it’s been going back up, and it was at 49,000 yesterday.

There’s a long way to go before the Trump administration’s statements that we’ve actually beaten the novel coronavirus will prove true – and there’s still the likelihood that there will be another big wave of infections and deaths in the fall, and that school reopenings will seed a lot of local outbreaks, as happened in Israel. Also, no country ever “beats” the virus. Vietnam and New Zealand have shown that months of zero new cases don’t show the virus has disappeared. But most countries in the developed world at least have it under control, unlike the US.

Hopefully the newly-announced deal with Abbott Labs for 150 million new tests – which don’t require any lab analysis at all and can be read in 15 minutes, although they have to be administered by a health professional – might finally give the US the testing capacity it needs to control the virus. It’s bizarre that the administration made such a big deal over the FDA’s emergency use authorization for blood plasma treatment – when there’s little to no evidence that it will improve things at all – yet hasn’t shouted from the rooftops about the new Abbott deal.

But there are two reasons why it hasn’t:

1.      Trump wanted something to announce on the first day of the GOP convention. The plasma was all he had then.

2.      By touting the testing deal, he would be showing that his previous statements that we’re doing more testing than we need – rather than needing much more capacity than we have, as is actually the case – were false.

But he’s not just concerned about being seen as a liar – if he were worried about that, he wouldn’t say anything at all, since just about every other sentence he says is a lie. Rather, he’s worried that making a big deal of the testing agreement will simply call attention to the fact that we need some sort of breakthrough like that (as well as others, like universal mask wearing in most states) in order to get the virus under control – and we would have had it under control months ago if we’d had even a fraction of the 150 million tests available then.

As John Bolton said, every important decision made in this White House is driven by what Trump perceives to be the best course to ensure his re-election. And he decided from the beginning that actually beating the virus wasn’t the way to win the election. He’s been sure all along that simply creating the illusion that the virus will either go away soon, or that it’s already beaten, will get him re-elected. And he’s been quite consistent about not wanting to take any steps – no matter how important – that could help us beat the virus, if they don’t at the same time contribute to this illusion.

Of course, he’s going to lose both the election and the fight against the virus. But not to worry – he’s been able to turn the presidency into a big profit generator for his businesses, and that was his number one goal all along. It’s just too bad he can’t continue to do that for another four years.

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	6,800	971
Month of August	31,243	1,008	117%
September 5	7,057	1,008
September 12	7,323	1,046
September 19	7,600	1,086
September 26	7,886	1,127
Month of Sept.	31,749	1,058	102%
Total March – September	219,763

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 185,985

Deaths reported yesterday: 1,151

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: 6,097,426

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 49,022

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: 3,376,557

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 185,985

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