Fixin’ to Die

On April 16 (which turned out to be almost exactly the day Covid deaths peaked, so far anyway), I began my post with the verse from a song that was very significant to me in my teenage years, the “Fixin’ to die rag” by Country Joe and the Fish. The verse reads

So it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting for?

Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn. Next stop is Viet Nam!

And it’s five, six, seven, open them pearly gates.

There ain’t no time to wonder why – Whoopee! – We’re all gonna die!

Of course, this song was written at the height the Vietnam War. It expresses incredulity that so many people supported the war wholeheartedly, even though there was no clear rationale for why we were even fighting in Vietnam, and what we might possibly accomplish through the sacrifice of so many American lives.

Of course, the answer to these questions became clear to the whole country later: The Vietnam War was a waste of 57,000 American lives and over a million Vietnamese ones. The only reason we were in Vietnam was to prop up a corrupt government that was sooner or later going to be washed away by the armies of Ho Chi Minh, who was seen even then as Vietnam’s George Washington. Of course we saw all of our efforts go down the drain in April 1975 with the fall of Saigon. This isn’t to denigrate the courage and dedication of our troops in Vietnam – but to admit that little to no good came out of their sacrifice.

Once again, the US is faced with a largely needless and preventable sacrifice of a huge number of American lives – currently more than five times the number lost in Vietnam and growing rapidly again. As you can see below, if just the current 4.0% 7-day growth rate in deaths continues through the end of December, we’ll see deaths per day jump by around 500, which will be the highest rate since April. And April is not a month we want to compare ourselves to.

Moreover, once again we have a large percentage of the population who are simply ignoring the facts and continuing to engage in and support the behaviors that are leading to these deaths. In both cases, the administration is openly lying to the public about the problem. But the difference between now and then is that in 1967 the Johnson administration was actually in control of information. They were able successfully to keep the American people from knowing how tenuous the military situation was, despite the fact that we had half a million troops in Vietnam. This strategy fell apart in the Tet Offensive of early 1968, when the public could see every day on TV that they had been fed a bunch of lies, and Americans were dying every day for no good reason. At that point, they turned away from Johnson (who dropped out of his re-election race) and overwhelmingly turned against the war.

Things are quite different this time around. Sure the top officials of the Trump administration have been continually lying about the pandemic. But other officials, as well as the daily news available from many sources, have contradicted this. It can truly be said that nobody is fooled now who doesn’t want to be fooled. Yet you have the spectacle of full airports for Thanksgiving, even though people were warned repeatedly that traveling and visiting households other than your own is extremely risky. It seems that this time around, a large percentage of the US population – and unfortunately their “leaders” – is truly “fixin’ to die”.

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 4.0%.

Note that the “accuracy” of the projected numbers diminishes greatly after 3-4 weeks. This is because, up until 3-4 weeks, deaths can 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.

Starting in December, I’m not going to project weekly numbers, although I will still track them historically.

Month	Deaths reported during month	Avg. deaths per day during month	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
Month of March	4,058	131
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
Month of July	26,649	860	111%
Month of August	30,970	999	116%
Month of Sept.	22,809	760	75%
Month of Oct.	24,332	785	107%
Month of Nov.	38,121	1,271	157%
Month of Dec.	53,587	1,729	141%
Total March-Dec.	327,780	1,068

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 272,254

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 4.0% (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: 13,611,896

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 144,912

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 9.3%  

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 8,042,333

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 272,254

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 3.3%

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.

IV. 7-day average of test positive rate for US: 9.5%

For comparison, the previous peak for this rate was 7.8% in late July, although the peak in early April was 22%. The rate got down to 4.0% in early October, but has been climbing since. It reached 10.0% in mid-November; whether that was a peak for this wave of infections remains to be seen. This is published by Johns Hopkins.

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