How do the numbers look? Much worse than I thought

I updated my numbers for the first time since Nov. 7 just now. There were some amazing differences in just 19 days:

1.      I was projecting 31,000 deaths in November then. Now it’s 40,000.

2.      All my projections are simply based on the current 7-day percent change in new deaths. It was 3.0% then. It is 4.7% now. Moreover, the rate of change in that number (the second derivative) is itself increasing.

3.      While I didn’t project deaths for December on Nov. 7, I would probably have guessed it would be maybe 34,000, based on the 3.0% 7-day rate at the time. With today’s 4.7% rate, that number is 64,000. Does anyone doubt that exponential growth is a terrible thing (at least when you’re talking about deaths from disease)?

4.      I would have projected about 300,000 deaths for the year on Nov. 7. Now it’s 340,000. Even more striking, this makes it almost a lead pipe cinch that by Inauguration Day (or maybe a few days later), there will be 400,000 dead in the US.

Based on the Thanksgiving travel projections, it seems a lot of people still just aren’t taking the virus seriously. It’s very hard to see that continuing much longer.

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 4.7%.

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.

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	4,933	705
October 24	5,771	824
October 31	5,998	857
Month of Oct.	24,332	785	107%
November 7	7,191	1,027	20%
November 14	7,959	1,137	11%
November 21	10,614	1,516	33%
November 28	12,254	1,751	15%
Month of Nov.	39,970	1,332	164%
Month of Dec.	63,868	2,060	160%
Total March-Dec.	339,910	1,107

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 268,262

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 4.7% (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: 13,139,882

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 182,802

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 10.6%  

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 7,808,059

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 268,262

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 3.4%

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 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