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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