Trump’s doing his best to prevent a vaccine from being effective – and he’s succeeding!

President Trump seems to have a preternatural ability to achieve by his actions the exact opposite of what he in theory wants to happen. This has been especially true of his relentless attempts lately to sideline and denigrate the experts in the CDC and FDA who say that any new vaccine needs to be thoroughly tested before it’s rolled out to any large population. It needs to be proven both safe and effective.

The safety concern is of course part of the fundamental medical principle: “First, do no harm.” The effectiveness concern is much more sociological: If the vaccine can’t be shown to be effective, almost nobody will accept even a small health risk in order to be vaccinated. However, Trump has made it very clear that he’s already decided that any vaccine that can be made available before Election Day will be both safe and effective – you just have to believe him (!).

So what have been the results of that campaign? Four days ago, the Pew Research Center reported that the percentage of Americans who say they will definitely or probably be vaccinated has dropped from 71% in May to 51% now. And the percentage who say they definitely or probably wouldn’t get vaccinated now stands at 49% (note that it seems there is literally nobody still on the fence on this question. That in itself is a remarkable achievement for Trump!).

Moreover, responses from both Republicans and Democrats have changed by almost exactly the same percentage: Republicans were 21% less likely to say they’d get the vaccine in September vs. May, and Democrats were 20% less likely. Who says there’s no bipartisanship anymore?

Needless to say, a vaccine that is only taken by half the people is going to have limited effectiveness. And what if a new vaccine comes out later that is both very safe and very effective? It’s going to be quite hard to get all of the people who got vaccinated the first time to agree to a second vaccination (which will probably be their third, since the first vaccine will very likely require two doses). Unlike in golf, there probably won’t be a mulligan here.

Why did this change happen? Has there been any news that say one of the leading vaccine candidates actually hurts people, or something like that? No. It’s simply that Trump has made it completely clear he wants a vaccine by Election Day, and he’s not at all concerned about safety or effectiveness. If those attributes turn out to be lacking in the vaccine he pushes, it won’t matter. The election will be decided by the time that becomes known.

So since little concerns like safety and effectiveness aren’t important for Trump, will pushing the vaccine out before it has been properly tested actually help him achieve his main goal of getting re-elected? It’s very hard to see how that could happen, since both Republicans and Democrats are now far less likely to agree to be inoculated. The best Trump could hope for is that rolling this out won’t significantly decrease his support, and maybe he’s right about that.

But then why not do the right thing and simply let the vaccine be rolled out once it’s been tested? That’s the most interesting thing about Trump: The way he sticks with unpopular positions even after it’s become clear that they won’t help him in the polls.

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 2.8%.

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	5,734	819
Month of Sept.	23,945	798	77%
Total March – September	211,686

Red = projected numbers

 

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 204,118

Deaths reported yesterday: 294

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 2.8% (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: 7,004,990

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 33,566

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 4.7%   

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 4,250,421

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 204,118

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 4.6%

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: 4.7%

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