New cases double in one week

I have two observations on the numbers. First, new cases this past week were almost exactly double those of the previous week; thank you, Omicron! However, new deaths fell from the previous week. Thanks for that, too, Omicron! Of course, deaths are a lagging indicator, and they will certainly go up in the next few weeks – but even then, nowhere near in the same proportion to cases that they did under Delta. Meanwhile, just about 100% of ICU admissions and Covid deaths are now among the unvaccinated, including children. So it’s safe to say that daily Covid deaths would be in the low hundreds now, if everyone were vaccinated who could be.

Second observation: We can now do the first year-to-year pandemic comparison. New deaths in 2021 jumped 39% over 2020. Of course, since vaccination was essentially available to everyone in the US for at least half of 2021, total deaths should if anything have been lower. But as we know, a lot of people resisted getting vaccinated (and many still are), and the Delta variant proved much more transmissible (and at least as deadly) as the older variants that it displaced. So instead of deaths going down last year, they went up, and by a lot.

Presumably, that won’t happen this year, but at over 400,000 new cases every day in the past week, it’s very hard to say that Covid deaths this year will be anywhere near the annual death toll from the flu: 15-50,000. Note that 400,000 daily new cases is double the figure from last week, and close to three times the previous daily record set last September. The average daily new cases since the start of the pandemic is probably about 40,000 – itself quite a high number.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, January 2.

Month

Deaths reported during month/year

Avg. deaths per day during month/year

Deaths as percentage of previous month/year

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%

Month of Nov.

38,364

1,279

77%

Month of Dec.

41,452

1,337

108%

Total 2021

492,756

1,350

158%

Total Pandemic so far

847,408

1,272

 

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 847,408

Average daily deaths last seven days: 1,365

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 1,504

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 1.1%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 56,142,175

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 2,919,731 (417,104/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 1,456,730 (208,104/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 5.5% (2.8% last week)

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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