The (most recent) Week from Hell

I am sorry I once again went two weeks without posting, but it turns out that there was definitely a benefit to doing so: I now realize that the week before last (the week starting August 15) was The Week from Hell. On steroids, no less.

In that week, 10,714 people in the US died of Covid-19 (which equals 1,531 a day), a level last seen on March 7, as we were coming down from the disastrous (and completely unnecessary) third wave - which I hereby christen the Donald Trump/Kristi Noem (for Sturgis) Memorial Wave. This compared to 4,445 deaths (635 a day) during the week of August 8, so this means that weekly deaths were up more than 100% during the week of August 15. Of course, if this trend had continued, we would have been in April 2020 territory very soon, and it would be time to order a big shipment of refrigerator trucks (beyond the ones that Texas ordered about a month ago – who dares say that Greg Abbott isn’t always thinking ahead to what the people of Texas are going to need? As long as it doesn’t have to do with masks or vaccines, of course).

So if I’d written a post last week, it would have been quite negative and depressing. But since I didn’t, my post today is at least much less depressing. This is because the number of deaths during the seven days beginning August 22 was down to 1,078. This of course is still very high, but it’s definitely going in the right direction. It could be just a statistical fluke, but assuming it’s real, this means that increased masking and vaccinations in recent weeks may be having an impact. It seems that a lot of the unvaccinated, unmasked people are getting the message that they’re only hurting themselves and their families.

I recently heard of a young couple that you could call distant relatives of mine in Illinois, both in their 30s. They were unvaccinated and vocal about that fact, but decided that attending a big fair without masks was a wise thing to do, from a risk management point of view. It turns out that wasn’t the case, and they both quickly came down with Covid. The husband is in the hospital on oxygen, although the wife is still at home – which is a good thing, since they have two young children, and the wife is pregnant.

It seems that stories like this one are starting to have an effect. At least some people who have been gloating that they’re owning the libs by not getting vaccinated and not wearing a mask indoors may be rethinking their attitude. I’ll look forward to seeing the numbers next week.

 

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, August 29.

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	655,824	1,184

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of last Sunday: 655,824

Average deaths last seven days: 1,078

Average deaths previous seven days: 1,531

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 1.2%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 39,827,066

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 1,107,425 (= 158,204/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 1,252,923 (= 178,989/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 2.9%  

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