March 24, 2020, 10:40 pm
Global Cases: up 11.5 percent, or 43,500, to 422,600.
Global Deaths: up 14.3 percent, or 2,375, to 18,900.
Global Recoveries: up 6.3 percent, or 6,500, to 109,000.
(**New Metric**) Global Unresolved: up 13.3 percent, or 37,700, to 295,000.
The proportion of Unresolved to Recovered is growing. On March 4, 2020, the Unresolved cases made up 40% of the total, while Recoveries made up 56 percent, and Deaths accounted for 4 percent. Today, by contrast, those proportions are 70 percent Unresolved, 26 percent Recovered, and 4 percent Deaths. While Unresolved and Recoveries ebb and flow over time as waves of infection move geographically, Deaths have held steady at between 2 and 4 percent, with an average of 3 percent. This does not bode well for America.
My projections have included figures for 1, 2, and 3 percent Case Fatality Rates (CFR), and I have often chosen the 2 percent rate when noting a specific number. If the rate should more likely be 3 percent, then that means all of my previous projections need to be revised upwards by 50 percent. So, where several days ago, I reported that the number of Deaths we could expect in America by the end of April, with 150,000,000 infections, was 6.4 million, a 3 percent CFR would predict 9.6 million Deaths.
I made that prediction on several days ago, based on an assumed rate of the number of cases doubling every three days. In fact, the number has been doubling in less than three days, and I’ve been updating the most recent data with actual data rather than projections, which then changes the projections.
For example, on March 11 there were 1,189 Cases. Based on that one figure, the projection for March 14 (three days later) was 2,378. In fact, there were 2,951. With that new figure, the projection ofr March 17, another three days later, was 5,902. In fact, there were 6,509. Again then, the next projection for March 20 should have been 13,018. In fact, however, there were 19,575. Thus, the projection for March 23 should have been 39,150. In fact, the number was 45,346.
This is harrowing data. It means that the doubling rate is less than three days. This is exponential growth. It projects that by May 1, 2020, there will be 371.5 million infections in the United States. That is the entire population, plus 30 million.
At a CFR of three percent, that equates to 11.1 million deaths.
Again, I will state that I do not know a single thing about epidemiology. All I know is that if someone were to bother to plug some numbers into a calculator, this is what they would come out with.
According to www.ecology.com, which came up when I googled the question, “How many people die each day in the USA,” the answer is 151,600.
The website I referenced the other day, covidactnow.org, showed the dates on which each state’s hospital systems would be overwhelmed. For New York and Washington, that date is projected as March 27, three days from now. For California, April 7. For many other states, the data is somewhere around early- to mid-april.
Now, I don’t have any idea how to calculate how many lives are SAVED every day. According to https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-healthcare-errors/u-s-hospitals-make-fewer-serious-errors-50000-lives-saved-idUSKCN0JG19Z20141202, “About 50,000 people are alive today because U.S. hospitals committed 17 percent fewer medical errors in 2013 than in 2010.” That means that, just based on medical error calculations, some 800 patients’ lives are saved every single day by doctors in hospitals. According to time.com, there are approximately 2.5 million deaths each year. Let’s assume that for every death, there is one medical rescue. (If someone can provide me an actual number, please do.) That equates to 6,850 lives saved per day.
But we can assume that, with hospitals overwhelmed entirely with COVID-19 cases, all of those lives will be lost. If we further assume that, from April 15 to April 30, all hospitals will be devoted entirely to COVID-19 patients, then we can add more than 100,000 additional deaths to the COVID-19 death toll in just that two-week period.
I repeat: I hope to god that I am wrong about all of this. I guess we’ll find out in about seven days.