What do you do when your commander-in-chief waves the white flag?

Joe Biden’s ill-considered off-the-cuff remarks have damaged him since the beginning of his political career and he seems to have done it again, with his recent remark on “60 minutes” that the pandemic is over. On Monday, Leanna Wen of WaPo surprised me by agreeing with him, although a WaPo editorial the same day said Biden shouldn’t have said what he did.

Here’s the deal:

1.      In this week last year, daily new reported Covid cases were about twice as much as today. However, last year there was very little at-home testing, whereas now it’s ubiquitous. It’s certain that total new cases this year are at least equal to total cases last year, and probably much more.

2.      Deaths in this week last year were about 2300 per day, while last week they were 370. That’s a big difference, but deaths were on their way up last year, after being as low as 234 per day in early July. So there’s no assurance at all that, as winter kicks in and we’re all indoors more – but not at all afraid of the coronavirus, thanks to our president – the death rate won’t kick up a lot more, although it’s hard to believe Covid deaths will ever reach 2,000 a day again (let alone their maximum of 4,000 a day in January 2021).

3.      Everyone compares Covid to the flu and says, “It’s now just an endemic disease like the flu.” I looked at the flu deaths numbers for a decade before Covid (which we need to exclude, since the fact that people weren’t gathering much meant that flu was much less widespread) and daily deaths seem to average about 80 or 90. Even that seems like a lot to me, but let’s assume that’s a “normal” level for an endemic disease. So, even if Covid deaths average 400 a day going forward, that’s still four times the flu (and it doesn’t take into account long covid or possible long-term side effects like dementia. Fortunately, since I still haven’t had Covid, I don’t have to worry about dementia, at least now).

Did I mention that, since I haven’t had Covid, I don’t need to worry about dementia? 

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, September 18.

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%
Month of June 2022	11,109	370	97%
Month of July 2022	11,903	384	107%
Month of August 2022	16,199	540	136%
Total Pandemic so far	1,078,663	1,159

 

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday:          1,078,663

Average daily deaths last seven days: 430

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 387

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.3%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 97,509,436             

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 370,140 (52,877/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 512,959 (73,280/day)

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