Preparing for the Pandemic Winter

This morning’s Washington Post had a good story about a large region that opened up too quickly this summer and is now paying the price for that in increased Covid cases and deaths. It’s Europe. They had a little too good a time on their summer vacations, and now the governments are all taking steps to tighten things up – closing bars and restaurants, etc. – with even more likely to come. They’re doing this because they recognize that the Covid situation is only going to get worse in the fall, as people move indoors more and flu cases start to take up hospital beds.

How about the US? Does this describe us as well? We certainly opened up too quickly, at least in some states. But our story is quite different because

1.      We didn’t have the virus under control in almost any state when some states started reopening in early May (or in some cases, they never really closed in the first place). Moreover, there’s still no state that can be said to have the virus under control now, although a few like New York have good test positivity rates (i.e. 1% or lower). However, the problem is that, since there’s no good way for NY (and especially NYC) to force everyone coming in from out of state to quarantine, this can’t be sustained over a long period.

2.      While individual states and localities are doing what they can to prepare for the fall/winter, the complete disinterest on the part of the White House – and in fact their active efforts to obstruct preparation by for example changing guidance on the CDC website – makes the situation in the US as a whole much more precarious. It’s safe to say that, if Europe has something to worry about for the fall, we have twice as much to worry about.

The Times carried an excellent article recently discussing the problems we’ll face - whether or not a vaccine will be available this year – and what both your state/local government and you personally should be doing to protect yourself, given that there’s no reasonable prospect of coordinated federal help until after January 20. And that fact alone does point to one important thing you need to do, either before or on November 3. 

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 2.6%.

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

5,310

759

 

September 19

5,696

814

 

September 26

5,264

752

 

Month of Sept.

23,001

767

74%

Total March – September

210,742

 

 

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 207,538

Deaths reported yesterday: 942

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 2.6% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above. 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: 7,185,4891

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 45,365

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 4.8%  

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 4,438,906

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 207,538

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 4.5%

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: 4.9%

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. As of 9/15, rate for New York state: .9%. For Texas: 7.9%. For Florida: 12.3%.  For Arizona: 6.9. For California: 3.3%).

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

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