The contradiction comes home to roost

There’s always been a contradiction at the heart of Trump’s presidency: He ran as a populist (especially with his promises of a big infrastructure bill), but since taking office his policies have very consistently followed the “traditional” (since Reagan) GOP line of lower taxes on large corporations and the wealthy, less or no regulation (especially on the environment), and stopping any expansion of the social safety net – if not eviscerating it altogether, as we saw from the 40 or so votes in Congress to kill the ACA while Obama was president. This is hardly a populist agenda, but it’s certainly Mitch McConnell’s agenda!

Since the Democrats took control of the House in the 2018 election, Trump hasn’t been able to implement any of these policies through legislation (not that he’s even tried, of course), but he has certainly been effective in implementing a lot of them through executive orders and other administrative measures. He’s kept his base very happy through focusing on peripheral issues, especially restricting immigration (both legal and illegal) and putting in place Supreme Court justices who will oppose abortion, that have just about zero impact on their day-to-day lives, let alone the lives of the broader US middle class.

However, now he finds himself in a real quandry. Since May, McConnell and the Senate Republicans have blocked all significant legislation to deal with the novel coronavirus, as well as the financial aid that’s needed to prevent more serious economic destruction than has so far occurred. The Democrats have a substantial proposal on the table to deal with these and other problems, including aid for hard-pressed state and local governments. Trump has acknowledged that a big package is needed, as do those GOP Senators who are up for re-election (notably Lindsay Graham, who just a month or two ago was still saying that the unemployment insurance subsidies would simply encourage people to stay home from work, but has now changed his position 180 degrees - not the least due to the fact that he’s in a very tight race, where his opponent has raised a record amount for any Senate race in history).

There’s little question that the Democrats’ proposal would improve Trump’s currently very dismal re-election prospects, as well as those of the GOP Senators needed for the GOP to keep control of the Senate. Trump recently put out a $1.8 billion proposal that included a number of poison pills, especially giving corporations and schools blanket protection against coronavirus lawsuits. It could have led to an agreement with Democrats on a compromise bill, which would have easily passed both the House and Senate, with the help of just four GOP Senators up for re-election. But the fact that it wouldn’t get the votes of the majority of GOP Senators is all it took to kill that idea, at least for the moment.

So Trump has to make two decisions now:

1.      Whether to reach a real compromise with the Democrats and have a relief bill passed and signed before the election; and

2.      Whether to allow the Amy Coney Barrett hearings to proceed, which will very likely prevent the Senate from passing a new relief bill, even if Trump decides to allow a compromise bill to pass.

The opinions of the American people are clear on both of these matters: They want a new relief bill, and they want the Senate to put off the Barrett hearings until after the election, so the bill can actually be passed. On the other hand, Trump’s base will be furious if, after making such a big deal about why Barrett needs to be confirmed quickly, Trump agrees to this pushback. Which way will he go? I suspect he’ll go with the base in the end, even though it will probably ensure he’ll lose by the biggest margin since Walter Mondale in 1984 (and perhaps the biggest margin for an incumbent president since 1932), and that the GOP will lose control of the Senate.

 

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 2.3%.

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	5,091	727
October 17	5,079	726
October 24	5,197	742
October 31	5,317	760
Month of Oct.	22,652	731	99%
	233,202

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 220,011

Deaths reported yesterday: 316  

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 2.3% (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: 8,037,739

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 45,791

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: 5,185,986

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 220,011

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 4.1%

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: 5.0%

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