I may have been wrong about a new wave – in the US, anyway

My fears a couple weeks ago that the US was in a new Covid wave were probably wrong – or at least premature. Not only has the growth rate in new infections for the US turned down again. The seven-day growth rate in new infections was 1.6% two weeks ago, but is down to 1.2% now. This matches the pandemic-low rate for the week ending March 14. On the other hand, at over 57,000 new cases every day, the US is hardly doing great – especially when you compare it to Taiwan, where they’ve had 1,100 cases so far in the pandemic, in a country a little less than 1/10 the size of the US, population-wise.

A similar story can be told for deaths. Last week’s 7-day growth rate in total deaths was 0.9%, a pandemic record low. But there’s another “hand” here, too: average daily deaths last week were 726. That number was 4,000 in early February, so it’s an improvement over that. But when you consider that Taiwan has had seven deaths in the entire pandemic, it shows we can do much better, especially given that more than half the US population has received at least one vaccine dose by now.

Of course, daily new infections worldwide are setting records, due to growth in many countries but especially India and Brazil – so we’re for once doing better than a lot of the rest of the world. Both India and Brazil would be in much better shape if they had leaders who cared more about the health of their people than their own (perceived) political interests. But the same can be said about the US. We have a leader like that now, but we didn’t for the first 11 months of the pandemic. And it’s very possible that, once the pandemic is officially declared over, the US will remain the world leader in total deaths. This is one case where being number one isn’t something to brag about.

 

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for April 25.

Month	Deaths reported during month	Avg. deaths per day during period	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
Month of March 2020	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. 2021	98,064	3,163	123%
Month of Feb.	68,918	2,461	70%
Month of March	72,693	2,345	105%
Total Pandemic so far	586,156	1,392

 

I. Total deaths

Average deaths last seven days: 726

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.9%

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases as of yesterday: 32,827,589

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 403,089 (=57,584/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 1.2%  

 

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