Ho hum, another wave is upon us…

 

We’re going into our fifth or sixth wave of coronavirus infections – to be honest, I’ve lost count. New infections have been going up since early April, and last week the daily increase in new infections jumped from 5% to 9%. That’s significant, especially when you consider that the real number of new infections is much higher than what’s reported (perhaps 5 to 10 times higher, by one estimate I read).

To save myself the work of typing the following sentence over and over from now on, I’ll just make it generic:

“This new wave is due to the (insert number of latest Omicron subvariant here – this week, it’s BA.2.12.1) Omicron subvariant. It is (insert two-digit percentage here. This week, it’s 25%) more transmissible than the previous (insert number of previous Omicron subvariant – this week, it’s BA.2) Omicron subvariant, which at the time was thought to be a marvel of transmissibility. Of course, that was last week…”

The good news is that daily deaths hit their lowest level since last July, at 324. On the other hand, that’s still equivalent to a jumbo jet crashing every day, filled with Americans. My guess is we wouldn’t consider that to be tolerable, but I guess it’s better than over 10 jumbo jets a day, as was the case at the beginning of 2021.

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, May 15.

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%

Month of March 2022

31,427

1,014

50%

Month of April 2022

13,297

443

42%

Total Pandemic so far

1,026,847

1,297

 

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 1,026,847

Average daily deaths last seven days: 329

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 453

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.2%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 84,323,476

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 741,761 (105,966/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 419,346 (59,907)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.9% (0.5% 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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