Covid deaths continued to fall last month, but they’ve already turned back up
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There’s
no question that daily new cases have jumped significantly, especially in the
past week. We were at 73,000 average new cases a day for the seven days ending
Sunday. We went through a five or six week period when that number was 10-20,000
each week. But it jumped to 54,000 the week before last.
Not
coincidentally, we had a similar jump in July of last year. Daily new cases had
been in the 20-40,000 range in June, but they jumped up to 60-70,000 in July
(and didn’t go above that until the third wave started to hit last October). That,
by the way, was the second wave. This is pretty depressing, since it means we’re
getting similar spread of the virus now, with half the population vaccinated.
Deaths,
until last week, had continued to fall – which is why the July deaths number is
so much lower than June’s. However, in the past week, average daily deaths
jumped from 262 to 353. And with case numbers jumping so much (and the great
majority of those cases being in unvaccinated people), it’s inevitable deaths
will be going higher in the coming weeks.
Of
course, this is due in large part to the Delta variant being much more
transmissible. But the fact that this could have been avoided if vaccinations
had been much higher makes this whole situation really depressing.
And
for a great view of the front lines of the war, read this article on
burnout among health care workers in Arkansas – sent to me by Kevin Perry. The
big difference between this situation and the first and second waves? It’s that
the healthcare workers were considered heroes then. Now they’re considered villains
by a large portion of the population in some states, because they have to tell
so many people that they can’t “cure” them – or even save their lives – since they
didn’t get vaccinated when they could have been. How’d you like to have arguments
about that all day, at the same time you’re working your a__ off to save
those same people’s lives?
The numbers
These numbers were
updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, August 1.
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 |
98,604 |
3,181 |
119% |
Month of Feb. |
68,918 |
2,461 |
70% |
Month of March |
37,945 |
1,224 |
55% |
Month of April |
24,323 |
811 |
64% |
Month of May |
19,843 |
661 |
82% |
Month of June |
10,544 |
351 |
53% |
Month of July |
8,833 |
287 |
84% |
Total Pandemic so far |
629,316 |
1,196 |
|
I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)
Total US reported Covid
deaths as of last Sunday: 629,830
Average deaths last seven
days: 353
Percent increase in total
deaths in the last seven days: 0.4%
II. Total reported cases (as
of Sunday)
Total US reported cases
as of Sunday: 35,768,924
Increase in reported cases
last 7 days: 517,471 (= 73,924/day)
Percent increase in reported
cases in the last seven days: 1.5%
I would love to hear any comments or questions you have
on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.
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