I’m going to start
featuring each day with what I now consider the most important projections of
all of the projections I’m doing: the projections of total deaths by week. As
these grow, people will focus almost exclusively on deaths, not cases – as well
they should, since the case numbers are probably far from reality, because of
the huge deficiency in testing. All of these numbers are generated by growing
yesterday’s total deaths number by the 3-day growth rate of that number. Here’s
the good news: The three day death rate is down from 54% to 53%, so all of
these numbers are down one or two percent from the ones I showed yesterday (and
the date that we’ll pass the 9/11 toll in a single day is now next Monday, not
Easter Sunday).
But what’s the bad
news? There is no current downward trend in new deaths. For example, the 3-day
growth rate was 48% four days ago. Of course, the rate is definitely down from
April 1, when it was 105%. You might say “That’s great! If the rate falls in close
to half every ten days, it will be about 30-35% on April 20! That will be real
progress.”
To examine what
the numbers would look like if that happened, I lowered the 53% 3-day growth
rate in new deaths that I’m using now to project new deaths by 2% each day, so
it ends up at 33% on April 10. As you can see immediately below this, that
lowers total deaths on May 1 alone by about 5,000 to 57,000. Only
57,000 deaths in one day! Isn’t that cause for celebration? I really don’t
think so. I’ve been saying since I started this blog that the most important
thing to consider is coronavirus infections and deaths grow exponentially.
If you knock down the growth rate but you don’t stop new infections cold,
you’ll be back where you were in a month or two. Remember, at the beginning of
March, there were only 100 cases and 6 deaths in the US. Look where we are now,
just 40 days later.
So unfortunately,
the idea of flattening the curve is no longer relevant – we’ve missed the
chance to do that. Now there are so many totally unknown cases out there that
we only learn about them when they die. If we had a good idea of the total
number of cases in the US as well as who was infected, a drastic slowdown in
the growth rate could itself be of some benefit – so we might, say, loosen the
social distancing when the rate of increase in deaths was down to five percent.
But given that we
don’t even know who’s infected now, we can’t even consider loosening up until
we do – and also until we have almost ubiquitous testing. Who’s going to want
to go back to work or school if they know the guy in the next cubicle or desk
might be infectious and not know it? There’s going to have to be weekly testing
at least for every worker – if not daily - except those who have had the
disease and have the antibodies to prove it.
That means we need
a national lockdown that’s as near total as possible, and the end to all travel
of say more than five miles (more in rural areas, of course) except for food
shopping, hospital visits, etc. And it has to last long enough that we’re
fairly sure almost all cases have been identified. Then we can gradually start
opening up, assuming there’s lots of testing available then. And if there’s not
much more testing than there is now (and people don’t wait 1-2 weeks for
results as they do now, meaning they’ll be infecting others that whole time),
we’ll have to wait until there is. The fact that we’ve been so far behind on
testing from the very beginning is why the US is in such a mess now, and why we’ll
without doubt end up with not only the most deaths in the world, but perhaps
the most per capita as well.
All numbers below
are based on yesterday’s reported figures of total confirmed cases, total
deaths and total recoveries, published on Worldometers.info. I’m happy to send
my spreadsheet that calculates all of these to anyone who wants to check the
calculations, although they follow the assumptions described below.
Date
on which the number of new deaths on that day will probably exceed the
toll of Sept. 11: April 13
Projected*
number of actual deaths during week ending April 11 (Saturday): 14,240
Projected*
number of actual deaths during week ending April 18 (Saturday): 36,985
Projected*
number of actual deaths during week ending April 25 (Saturday): 104,325
Projected*
number of actual deaths during week ending May 2 (Saturday): 277,918
Number
of new deaths on May 1 alone: 57,474
* Projected deaths for each day = previous
day’s deaths grown by yesterday’s 3-day percentage growth rate in new deaths –
equal to 53%. The weekly number is the sum of the projected deaths for
the 7-day period.
I. Numbers based on total cases, actual and
projected
Total US confirmed
cases: 468,895
Increase in cases
since previous day: 33,735 (vs. 34,611 increase yesterday)
Percent increase
in cases since yesterday: 8% (vs. 9% yesterday)
Percent increase
in cases since 3 days previous: 28% (vs. 29% yesterday)
“Set in stone” US deaths* over course of
pandemic: 189,154 (based on 4% case mortality rate)
*This number assumes a) Total cases grow by
28% into the future (= yesterday’s 3-day growth rate in cases); b) We impose a
massive lockdown, with prohibition of all non-essential travel, today; c) New
cases drop to zero in 28 days, because of the lockdown, but they continue to
grow at the current projected rate up to the 28th day; d) testing is
widely available by the 28-day mark; and e) case mortality rate = 4%. To
consider a 6% mortality rate, multiply each projection by 1.5. For 8%, double
it. For comparison, Italy’s case mortality rate is currently 11.75%.
Projected as of April 17 (7 days from today):
These numbers answer the question: What would
happen if we wait seven days to totally lock down the US, based on the
assumptions below (which frankly are themselves wildly optimistic).
Total expected cases*: 912,597 (vs. 859,854 expected yesterday)
Total expected deaths set in stone** over
course of pandemic: 362,790 (vs. 369,646 expected yesterday)
* The expected cases number assumes that
total cases grow by 28% for the next 7 days (= yesterday’s 3-day growth rate in
cases).
** The expected deaths set in stone number
assumes that a) Total cases grow by 28% into the future; b) We impose a massive
lockdown, with prohibition of all non-essential travel, on April 16; c) New cases
drop to zero 28 days later, because of the lockdown, but they continue to grow
at the current projected rate up to the 28th day; d) Testing is
widely available by the 28-day mark; and e) case mortality rate = 4%. To
consider a 6% mortality rate, multiply each projection by 1.5. For 8%, double
it. For comparison, Italy’s case mortality rate is currently
Projected as of April 24 (14 days from today):
These numbers answer the question: What would
happen if we wait 14 days to totally lock down the US, based on the assumptions
below (which frankly are themselves very optimistic)?
Total expected cases*: 1,611,111 (vs. 1,554,524 projected yesterday)
Total deaths set in stone* over course of pandemic:
649,928 (vs. 670,426 projected yesterday)
* The expected cases number assumes that
total cases grow 28% for the next 7 days (= yesterday’s 3-day growth rate in
cases).
** The expected deaths set in stone number
assumes that a) Total cases grow by 28% into the future; b) We impose a massive
lockdown, with prohibition of all non-essential travel, on April 23; c) New
cases drop to zero 28 days later, because of the lockdown, but they continue to
grow at the current projected rate up to the 28th day; d) Testing is
widely available by the 28-day mark; and e) case mortality rate = 4%. To
consider a 6% mortality rate, multiply each projection by 1.5. For 8%, double
it.
Date on which 500,000 deaths will be set
in stone: April 21
Date on which 1 million total pandemic
deaths will be set in stone: April 30
Number of deaths set in stone on April
30: 1,064,482
II. Numbers based on total deaths, reported
and projected
Total US deaths as of yesterday: 16,697
Increase in deaths since previous day: 1,900 (vs. 1,940 yesterday)
Percent increase in deaths since previous
day: 13% (vs. 15% yesterday)
Yesterday’s 3-day rate of increase in total
deaths: 53% (vs. 54% reported yesterday)
Date on which the number of new deaths on
that day will probably exceed the toll of Sept. 11: April 13
Projected*
number of actual deaths during week ending April 11 (Saturday): 14,140
Projected*
number of actual deaths during week ending April 18 (Saturday): 36,985
Projected*
number of actual deaths during week ending April 25 (Saturday): 104,325
Projected*
number of actual deaths during week ending May 2 (Saturday): 277,918
* Projected deaths for each day = previous
day’s deaths grown by yesterday’s 3-day percentage growth rate – equal to 53%.
The weekly number is the sum of the projected deaths for the 7-day period.
III.
Reported case mortality rate so far in the pandemic in the US:
These
numbers are also unaffected by the error I made.
Total
Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 25,928
Total
Deaths as of yesterday: 16,697
Deaths
so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 39% (vs. 39% yesterday) Let’s be
clear. This means that, of all the coronavirus cases that have been closed so
far in the US, 39% of them have resulted in death (compare that to the 4%
mortality rate I’ve been using to calculate total pandemic deaths, based on total
cases). Of course, this number will come down as time goes on and more cases
are closed in which the victim recovered. But it’s only come down by about 4
percentage points since Worldometers started publishing the recovery rate on
March 26, and on about half the days, it’s gone up; there is still no sign of a
downward trend. I’d say it’s much more likely my 4% mortality rate will turn
out to be too low, after the pandemic’s over and all of the bodies have been
counted, than it will be too high.
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