The news is quite good

I just updated my numbers for the first time in a month. I’ve changed the reporting so that I don’t have to record new deaths and cases every day in my spreadsheet, as I used to – now it’s just once a week. And I’m no longer trying to project at all – I just report what’s happened so far.

And that is quite good. In the last 30 days or so, the 7-day rates of increase in total deaths and total cases have both dropped in half, and there isn’t any sign of leveling off yet (as was the case in mid-February). Of course, that could change at any moment, and a couple of the new variants are worrisome – especially the one in Brazil.

Of course, one reason for the drop in new cases is vaccinations. But there’s still a real question how long the vaccine will last, and whether there’s any vaccine that would provide immunity against all new strains of the virus. It’s still very possible that the coronavirus will end up being like the flu virus – it will mutate so much that a new shot will be needed regularly (once a year, in the case of the flu) in order to provide a sufficient level of immunity (and even then, the flu virus mutates so quickly that there will always be new variants by the time you receive your shot. Hopefully, the coronavirus won’t be quite that bad).

On the other hand, there’s also the possibility that this coronavirus will turn out to be like the coronavirus that causes many cases of the common cold. That may have started out as a pandemic, but once almost everyone had had a cold multiple times, they had enough immunity to the new variants that colds are just an annoyance, nothing more (that’s also why we don’t have as many flu deaths as we used to).

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 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.	38,293	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 3/14	19,456	1,390
Total Pandemic	547,234	1,491

 

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 547,234

Average deaths last seven days: 1,290

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 1.7%

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases as of yesterday: 28,006,416

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 380,611 (=54,373/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 1.3%  

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

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 22,169,237

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 547,234

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. Until the beginning of January, it was steadily declining since a high of 41% at the end of March. Since then it’s been flat. 

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