How are we doing?

I haven’t done a post for four days, and even then I haven’t talked about the numbers for at least a week. So how are we doing now? As usual, it’s a mixed bag:

·        The 7-day growth rate of cases has fallen to 4.2%, its lowest level since Sept. 14. Is that good news? Not in any meaningful sense. Daily new cases averaged 44,000 over the past seven days, which is much higher than over the previous weeks. Why this discrepancy? Because the level of new cases continues to rise in absolute terms, this means the rate of growth can fall while the level is rising.

·        The US has the second-highest level of daily new cases in the world, after India. And India’s level is falling rapidly at the moment, while ours is rising. If we were getting a handle on the virus, daily new cases would be falling rapidly, not rising.

·        The 7-day rate of change in total deaths continues to fall and has now reached 2.4%, its lowest level so far. This shows that the healthcare system has continued to make good progress in reducing mortality, although of course death is hardly the only negative outcome from having Covid-19. Many people who got sick early in the pandemic are still having serious symptoms, some people have permanent heart damage, etc.

·        The ratio of total deaths to total closed cases continues to fall, which confirms the fact that treatment is getting better all the time.

·        The US percentage of deaths per 100,000 population is number 5 in the world, behind Peru, Brazil, Chile and Spain.

·        The test positive rate is kinda sorta falling, but at 4.6% is still too high. New York is at 1.2%, and has been around 1% for a couple of months. It’s no coincidence that they are the only major city in the US that has been mostly successful in reopening their schools, even partially.

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	5,226	747
October 17	5,354	765
October 24	5,484	783
October 31	5,618	803
Month of Oct.	23,613	762	104%
	234,163

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 213,524

Deaths reported yesterday: 864  

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: 7,549,323

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 51,403

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 4.2%  

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 4,777,577

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 213,524

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 4.3%

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: 4.6%

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