Sorry to spoil your Thanksgiving, but…

I’d say we’re in the fifth wave now – and we never got out of the fourth one. Just a little perspective:

·        The week of July 4, there were 234 Covid deaths per day. That figure stayed below 1,000 until late August. It hasn’t gone below that level since then.

·        In early October, we hit the high so far for the fourth wave: 2,225 deaths per day.

·        Since then, deaths per day have been generally declining. Last week, we were at 1,110/day.

·        However, in the seven days ended Sunday, deaths per day jumped to 1,475.

·        Given that daily new cases are again on an upward trend, and that we have cold weather and the holidays starting, there isn’t much likelihood that new deaths will go back down anytime soon, and they may well keep increasing.

Of course, the great majority of people who are dying of Covid nowadays are unvaccinated. Arithmetically speaking, the way to reduce those deaths to flu-like levels is to get everybody vaccinated, but we know that’s very hard. It’s tempting to blame this situation on right-wing hysteria specific to US politics, but Europe is now demonstrating that this isn’t simply an American problem.

It seems like the vaccinated population in the US has four choices:

1.      Mandate vaccinations for everybody and quarantine (at their expense) anybody who doesn’t get vaccinated. Of course, this is a completely unworkable idea in advanced democracies. But China? Piece of cake!

2.      Shut down all travel out of states – or even regions within states – with high concentrations of unvaccinated people. Again, unworkable.

3.      Require vaccination for all interstate travelers. Of course, there’s no way to enforce this for automobile travel, but it would at least force unvaccinated people who want to leave their state to take the long way – and it might help protect the whole of the country from remote states that have high death rates like North Dakota (which leads the country in deaths per capita).

4.      Leave things as they are: People are free to travel as long as they wear masks. Vaccination, besides for federal workers, is up to individuals and their employers (including state and local governments).

I think Door no. 3 is worth trying, although I’m guessing we’ll stick with Door no. 4. Unless this wave gets a lot worse than it is already, of course.

 

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, November 21.

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%
Month of August	31,160	1,005	351%
Month of Sept.	56,687	1,890	182%
Month of Oct.	49,992	1,613	88%
Total Pandemic so far	794,635	1,259

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 794,635

Average daily deaths last seven days: 1,475

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 1,110

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 1.3%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 48,685,374

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 683,299 (97,614

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 596,903 (=83,843/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 1.4%  

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