A good retrospective on (some of) what went wrong


Deaths dropped significantly last week vs. the previous week, so we may be on our way out of this. But we were sure of that around July of last year, when – as you can see below – we had the lowest deaths of any month of the pandemic so far other than March 2020, the first month. And then Delta came roaring in, followed by Omicron.

It would be nice to think we’re finally through all of that, but the fact remains that a large portion of the world’s population is still unvaccinated, mostly through lack of the opportunity but also through sheer obstinance (see MAGA Cult, Deleterious effects of). The pandemic will never be fully under control until the great majority of people in the world are vaccinated – and regularly boosted, as necessary.

This is one of the points made in a great article I just read in the Times. It discusses 4 or 5 of the biggest mistakes that – in retrospect – made the pandemic much more deadly than it had to be, starting with China’s initial suppression of the news that human-to-human transmission of the new virus was possible, and including the fact that there was no initial effort to include the rest of the world – other than the rich countries – in the benefits of vaccines. We have all paid the price for that, not just the people who died in the developing world, after the vaccines were widely available in the richer countries.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, March 6.

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%

Month of Jan. 2022

65,855

2,124

159%

Month of Feb. 2022

63,451

2,266

96%

Total Pandemic so far

986,531

1,366

 

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 986,531

Average daily deaths last seven days: 1,588

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 2,286

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: 80,965,066

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 332,034 (47,433/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 545,415 (77,916/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.4% (0.7% 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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