The numbers are (almost all) moving the wrong way

While it’s not exactly the time to start worrying about needing a lot more refrigerator trucks, I want to point out that 3 of the 4 numbers that I track are moving the wrong way. Here’s the deal:

·        The daily Covid deaths number, which has been growing at a 7-day rate of 2.8% or less for more than a week, abruptly jumped two days ago – which brought the 7-day rate to 3.1% yesterday.

·        This might not seem to be that big an increase, but it had a huge effect on my projected deaths for the rest of September (which is of course a period of less than two weeks). Specifically, my projection for total Covid-19 deaths in September has jumped by close to 2,500 over what it was just three days ago. That means we’ll have close to 1,300 additional deaths in each of the next two weeks. This was a shock because it was a complete reversal from the downward trend in projected deaths that I’d been seeing at least since late June.

·        Meanwhile, the daily new cases number, after falling to as low as 25,000 on Sept. 7 (coming down from a peak of over 50,000 just a few days previously), now seems to have settled in at around the 40,000 a day level, which is of course still way too high (25,000 a day is way too high, too! I read that, in order for the pandemic really to be under control in the US – meaning all cases could be contact-traced and isolated – new cases would have to be around 500 a day. The last time they were at that level was March 12).

·        The test positive rate, after declining steadily from a peak in early August, suddenly turned around when it reached a low of about 4.9% about five days ago. It’s now at 5.3%. As you probably know, this is the best indication of how far the virus has spread, since we’re very far from being able to test the entire population regularly.

·        The one number that continues to decline is the ratio of deaths to closed cases, which has steadily declined from 40% in late March to 4.7% yesterday. So even though cases are still growing rapidly, fewer people are dying of Covid-19, presumably because of better treatment techniques and less overcrowding of hospitals, as well as more infection of younger people, who are much less likely to die from the disease.

 

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 3.2%.

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	6,232	890
September 26	6,428	918
Month of Sept.	25,323	844	82%
Total March – September	213,064

Red = projected numbers

 

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 201,386

Deaths reported yesterday: 1,1789

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 3.1% (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: 6,829,319

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 40,848

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 4.3%  

 

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 4,119,784

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 201,386

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: 5.4%

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