0% !

A month or two after I started writing this blog (which was in the middle of March 2020), a friend who lives in a state that had so far had about zero cases (at the same time as the refrigerator trucks were hard at work in NYC) asked me what growth rate in deaths I would be satisfied with. At the time, deaths were probably growing around 15-25 percent per day, meaning that, if they continued at that rate, the entire US population would probably have been dead by the end of the year (a bummer, to be sure!).

However, by that time there were already a sizable number of people, led by our esteemed president, who thought things were going to work out just fine, as long as we put people back to work as quickly as possible (remember the meat packers? And the managers who had a betting pool on who would be the next employee to die of Covid? Ah, those were the days…). So, people were already telling me my death numbers were imaginary, etc.

I could only think of one answer for my friend: 0%. Here’s the problem: with a virus that grows exponentially, it doesn’t matter how low it starts (and on March 1, 2020, the date on which I retroactively started tracking and deaths, there had been only one Covid death so far in the US), it will eventually expand to include the entire population - unless something intervenes like herd immunity (remember that? Since waiting for that to happen would have probably led to over 200 million deaths, I’m glad we didn’t listen to the people, including some in the White House, not surprisingly, who advocated for that) or – God forbid! – public health measures.

Well, this past week we actually hit 0.0% new deaths in the past week on my spreadsheet (there were actually 76, but that’s less than .1%, which is how I’ve been rounding deaths percentages since the beginning). On the other hand, deaths are still up .4% over last month, meaning 4,581 people died of Covid in April.

But 4600 isn’t an insignificant number, and more importantly, the Arcturus variant from India is now gaining a foothold in the US, which could drive up both cases and deaths in the next few weeks. I’m not going to stop paying attention now!

The numbers

These numbers were updated based on those reported on the Worldometers.info site for Sunday, April 30.

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%
Month of September 2022	13,074	436	81%
Month of October 2022	12,399	400	95%
Month of November 2022	9,221	307	74%
Month of December 2022	11,978	386	130%
Total 2022	271,387	744	-45%
Month of January 2023	17,768	573	148%
Month of February 2023	11,247	402	63%
Month of March 2023	7,885	263	70%
Month of April 2023	4,581	153	58%
Total Pandemic so far	1,159,839	1,023

I. Total deaths (as of Sunday)

Total US reported Covid deaths as of Sunday: 1,159,839

Average daily deaths last seven days: 76

Average daily deaths previous seven days: 173

Percent increase in total deaths in the last seven days: 0.0%

II. Total reported cases (as of Sunday)

Total US reported cases as of Sunday: 106,630.327

Increase in reported cases last 7 days: 52,271 (7,467/day)

Increase in reported cases previous 7 days: 112,135 (16,019/day)

Percent increase in reported cases in the last seven days: 0.0% (0.1% last week)

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com.