Are we in the fall wave now?

The trends aren’t good. New cases are increasing rapidly, and we’re again over 50,000 new cases a day. The test positive number is creeping back up, even though it’s still too high on a national basis (and astronomical in some states like Montana and the Dakotas). Deaths are stuck at an unsustainably high level. The only good news is that the ratio of deaths to closed cases continues to fall, meaning that people that get sick are less likely to end up dying. But that effect is being overwhelmed by the increase in daily new cases.

We might even end up like India, with a huge and growing number of cases, but fewer deaths because the health care system is getting better at keeping people alive. This might be OK if the only possible negative outcome of Covid-19 sickness was death. But we know that lots of people have long lingering effects, and some people suffer what might be permanent damage such as loss of some heart function.

As it stands, even if things don’t get any worse than they are now, the US will have close to 300,000 deaths by the end of the year. And we’ll be over that number on January 20, when hopefully we’ll finally begin the road to real recovery from this nightmare.

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 2.4%.

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	5,353	765
Month of Sept.	22,809	760	75%
October 3	5,102	729
October 10	5,117	731
October 17	5,239	748
October 24	5,364	766
October 31	5,492	785
Month of Oct.	23,195	789	102%
	233,745

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 217,738

Deaths reported yesterday: 957  

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 2.4% (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: 7,833,763

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 56, 652

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: 5,025,910

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 217,738

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 4.2%

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 10/2, rate for New York state: 1.2%. For Texas: 6.0%. For Florida: 10.9%.  For Arizona: 6.2%. For California: 2.8%).

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