I’m trying, but I can’t be optimistic

It’s great to have monthly figures for Covid cases and deaths, going back to March 2020 (I only show the deaths below, because they’re a lot more reliable than case numbers). It really helps to have a longer perspective than just the last few weeks and months.

There’s a great example of that today. Look at deaths from January to May of this year. Pretty impressive, no? A steady decline. Surely, we’ve beaten Covid!

However, now look at June and July of 2021; those numbers are even lower. And if you recall, at that time we were very confident that Covid was behind us, just like we are now. But meanwhile, the new – and extremely deadly – delta variant was marshalling its forces for an all-out assault, which became clear as deaths tripled in August, and went up from there.

Nowadays, it’s hard to keep track of all the new variants (I no longer try), but each is more transmissible than the last (that’s how it gets to be number one). Of course, none of these is anywhere near as deadly as delta, but they don’t need to be – they become deadly just because they infect so many people.

And if you don’t believe me, look at the Omicron wave in January and February: two months with over 60,000 deaths. That was the second-largest wave so far, beaten only by the wave of December 2020 through February 2021. Omicron was only a fifth as deadly as delta, yet the omicron wave led to a lot more deaths. Why? This January, there were about 21 million new cases, vs. a maximum of 4.4 million a month during the delta wave.

This means we need to pay attention to cases in our long-term comparison. Let’s compare May 2021 to last month. Deaths are lower now, but how do cases compare? Last month, there were 99,000 new cases, which is almost exactly three times the May 2021 number. Moreover, there’s a huge difference between now and then, in that home testing is widely available now, but it wasn’t a year ago. It’s likely that cases identified at home that turn out to be mild or asymptomatic don’t get reported at all now. So the real number of cases today must be much larger than 99,000.

To sum up, it would be very mistaken to believe that we’ve finally beaten the pandemic and it’s downhill from here. Actual cases are probably at least five times as high as they were last year at this time. As happened last year, the inevitable big surge in cases will be postponed for the cooler weather; except it might be five times as high this year.

It would be nice to say that things will be better this year because many more people are vaccinated, but I just saw that only 66% of the population is full vaccinated now. That’s appalling. I heard over the weekend from someone who works at a hospital in a nearby Chicago suburb that their Covid beds are all full, and the patients are 100% unvaccinated. Natural selection at work, I guess. 

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, June 5.

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 2020

59,812

1,994

1,474%

Month of May 2020

42,327

1,365

71%

Month of June 2020

23,925

798

57%

Month of July 2020

26,649

860

111%

Month of August 2020

30,970

999

116%

Month of Sept. 2020

22,809

760

75%

Month of Oct. 2020

24,332

785

107%

Month of Nov. 2020

38,293

1,276

157%

Month of Dec. 2020

79,850

2,576

209%

Total 2020

354,215

1,154

 

Month of Jan. 2021

98,604

3,181

119%

Month of Feb. 2021

68,918

2,461

70%

Month of March 2021

37,945

1,224

55%

Month of April 2021

24,323

811

64%

Month of May 2021

19,843

661

82%

Month of June 2021

10,544

351

53%

Month of July 2021

8,833

287

84%

Month of August 2021

31,160

1,005

351%

Month of Sept. 2021

56,687

1,890

182%

Month of Oct. 2021

49,992

1,613

88%

Month of Nov. 2021

38,364

1,279

77%

Month of Dec. 2021

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%

Month of May 2022

11,474

370

86%

Total Pandemic so far

1,033,591

1,271

 

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 1,033,591

Average daily deaths last seven days: 330

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 334

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: 86,522,561

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 798,829 (114,118/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 704,069 (100,581/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.9% (0.8% 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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