Has progress stalled?

 Note from Tom: My email feed didn't seem to work on Monday, so those of you who read my posts in the emails didn't see this post. I think it's pretty interesting, so you might want to look at it now.

Since I’m now updating my numbers every seven days, I was struck – but not terribly surprised – to see that the decline in the growth rate of new total Covid cases turned around last week. The weekly growth rate was 1.3% a week ago, but is now up to 1.5%. And the absolute new case numbers are more striking: In the last seven days new cases averaged 62,874 a day, vs. 54,373 in the previous week.

Of course, this is just one week, so it’s not in itself too much cause for worry. However, the first time when daily new cases even reached this level was October 15. At the time, that seemed like a very worrisome sign. And it definitely was, since one month later, on Nov. 15, there were 147,000 new cases, on Dec. 15 there were 201,000, and on Jan. 15 there were 248,000. Of course, it’s highly unlikely they’ll jump so high again, but this shows we’re nowhere near the pandemic’s end.

New deaths continued to decline last week, to 1,154 a day. But if new cases keep rising, deaths will turn around as well in a few weeks. In any case, this many deaths in one day is only acceptable in comparison to the over-4,000-a-day numbers of early February. There’s only one country in the world that has more daily deaths than we do, and that’s Brazil. That’s nothing to be proud of.

I wrote this sardonic post last June, when daily deaths were around 800. In it, I asked why people should accept those numbers, since they certainly wouldn’t if they were due to airline crashes. Until our daily deaths are lower than the total pandemic deaths of Taiwan – 10 – I’ll never say we’re at the end of the pandemic.

The numbers

These numbers are calculated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site.

Month	Deaths reported during month	Avg. deaths per day during   period	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.	38,293	1,276	157%
Month of Dec.	79,850	2,576	209%
Total 2020	354,215	1,154
Month of Jan.	98,064	3,163	123%
Month of Feb.	68,918	2,461	70%
March thru 3/21	27,536	1,154
Total Pandemic so far	555,314	1,485

 

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 555,314

Average deaths last seven days: 1,154

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 1.5%

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases as of yesterday: 30,521,774

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 440,117 (=62,874/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 1.5%  

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 22,754,252

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 555,314

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 2.4%

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 has been declining since a high of 41% at the end of March 2020.  

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