Our lesson of the day: The Ostrich

  

The Post published a story yesterday that starts like this: “One month into the forced reopening of Florida's schools, dozens of classrooms — along with some entire schools — have been temporarily shuttered because of coronavirus outbreaks, and infections among school-age children have jumped 34 percent. But parents in many parts of the state don't know if outbreaks of the virus are related to their own schools because the state ordered some counties to keep health data secret.” 

And this: “Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has pushed aggressively for schools to offer in-person classes, even when Florida was the hot spot of the nation, and threatened to withhold funding if districts did not allow students into classrooms by Aug. 31.” Of course, most experts recommend not opening schools in an area for in-person learning when the novel coronavirus is still not controlled, especially measured by the level of cases per capita and the test positive rate. But local school districts were faced with the choice of reopening or losing funding, so they went ahead and reopened. The results were predictable.

But what’s been the state’s response to these setbacks? They’ve ordered some counties not to report data on outbreaks, in spite of the fact – or probably because of the fact – that they are experiencing them. So the only official way that a parent will learn about a problem is when they are called to say that their child has been exposed to someone who has the disease. And even then, they won’t be told how many other kids and adults in the school have gotten sick. So the person who exposed their child could have been an isolated case, or one of 100.

 If you were a parent, don’t you think it would be nice to know if there’s a serious problem in your child’s school – meaning you might want to bring them home for remote learning, as is always allowed? Well, in many places in Florida, you won’t be able to do that, unless you’re lucky enough to have someone in the district who ignores the directive and puts the information on Facebook or a web site, as discussed in the article.

Of course, we can’t be too hard on Gov. DeSantis, for denying people of his state information that could literally save their lives. He’s just following the example of his idol Donald Trump, who – we learned yesterday – admitted to Bob Woodward in early February that the novel coronavirus was a huge threat and could be spread through the air. Yet Trump publicly downplayed the virus, and went on to stage five more big indoor rallies, before they were shut down when most of the country shut down. Could it be possible that these leaders put what they perceive to be their political interests above literally saving the lives of their constituents?

No, that’s impossible to believe…

 

 

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 3%.

 

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	30,970	999	116%
September 5	5,961	852
September 12	5,332	762
September 19	5,480	783
September 26	5,631	804
Month of Sept.	22,964	765	74%
Total March – September	210,705

Red = projected numbers

 

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 195,245

Deaths reported yesterday: 1,208

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 3% (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: 6,549,771

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 35,395

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 4%  

 

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 3,846,659

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 195,245

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: 5.3%

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: 11.2%. For Florida: 12.3%.  For Arizona: 7.2%).

 

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