May 4, 2020, 9:45 pm
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The big news item today is that the CDC issued a revised estimate of the death toll the corona virus will take on the United States, which the White House was quick to deny. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa/researchers-double-u-s-covid-19-death-forecast-citing-eased-restrictions-idUSKBN22G1T3.
Please look at my blog post from April 21, https://stayhomebewell.org/2020-04-21/, you’ll see that I projected 6,000 deaths per day by May 24.
The most important factor in all of the data analysis of this pandemic, in my view, is the prevalence of waves in the growth rates in Cases, Deaths, Recoveries, and Unresolved. I’ve gone into significant detail about all of this in previous posts, so I won’t revisit the point here today. If you want to understand, I recommend you go back through the archives. The main point is that, a growth rate of, say, 30 percent per day, when applied to a base of say, 1,000 cases, produces exponential growth. Daily new infections equal 300, then 390, then 507, etc. As the base increases and the growth rate declines, then a 10 percent growth rate over a base of, say 10,000, equals 1,000 new infections per day. The United States is currently experiencing a growth rate of roughly two percent, over a base of more than one million, which equals 20,000 new infections per day.
Throughout my analysis over the last several weeks, I have been hammering on the emergence of peaks and valleys in the global growth rates because I believe that the same will occur in the US growth rates. What this means is that, if the trough has formed, then a three percent growth rate over a base of one million cases produces 30,000 new cases per day; and a growth rate of four percent over a base of 1,500,000 cases will produce 60,000 new cases per day, and a growth rate of five percent over a base of 2,000,000 produces…
…
…
…that’s right. Per day.
Now, if you do that same calculation with deaths, you get the same harrowing results. We are currently at 70,000 dead in the United States and the growth rate is two percent. That’s 1,400 dead today. But when the base is 100,000, if the growth rate is six percent, then that will mean 6,000 dead per day. On April 21, I projected that we will see this level by May 24. I may be off in the timing by a few days. But I’m afraid I am very likely right about the general trajectory. Please look at my post of April 15 to see an evaluation of the projections I made during the month of March. https://stayhomebewell.org/2020-04-15/.
Global Cases: up 2.31 percent, or 82,400, to 3,644,840. On April 27, or seven days ago, the growth rate bottomed at 2.24 percent. For the last seven days, it fluctuated within a range between that level and 2.82 percent. Yesterday’s growth rate was 2.25 percent, possibly marking a seven-day trough, but it is too early to call a return to increasing growth rates yet. However, this is what I have been predicting for many weeks. As usual, time will tell. Past troughs have had durations of 8-10 days.
The extended rolling average growth rate is 2.8 percent. It has not yet shown a clear trough, but the convergence of the extended rolling average rate with the current daily rate is indicative of the trough fully forming now.
US Cases: up 2.15 percent, or 25,533 new cases recorded today, to 1,212,835. The growth rate bottomed at 2.31 percent seven days ago, then rose and fell within a range as high as 4.35 percent. Today’s rate is the lowest to date. The extended rolling average growth rate is 3.2 percent, still on the decline.
Global Deaths: up 1.72 percent, or 4,264, to 252,366. The rate on April 26 was 1.83 percent, and yesterday’s rate was 1.36 percent. In between, it went as high as 4.7 percent. Again, too early to call the trough. The extended rolling average growth rate is 3.0 percent, still on the decline.
US Deaths: up 1.97 percent, or 1,352, to 69,921. The growth rate in this metric bottomed at 2.14 percent on April 26, and has risen and fallen since that time, marking a new bottom yesterday at 1.67 percent. The next few days will show whether the trough is formed and the curve is returning to increases.
Global Recoveries: up 3.63 percent, or 41,800, to 1,194,872. The growth rate has fluctuated for the last seven days at an average of 3.8 percent, with a low of 2.81 percent yesterday. If the rate continues to rise in the coming days, I will call the formation of the trough.
US Recoveries: up 5.48 percent, or 9,764, to 188,027. The growth rate in this metric has fluctuated too much from day to day to derive meaningful insight on a daily basis. The 7-day rolling average bottomed yesterday at 2.1 percent; the extended rolling average continues to decrease, and today is at 2.6 percent.
Global Unresolved: up 1.68 percent, or 36,335, to 2,197,602. Again, this is the number of people throughout the world currently recorded as ill, at whatever level, from asymptomatic to on a ventilator in a medically-induced coma. The growth rate bottomed on April 27 at 1.07 percent, but has fluctuated in a range averaging 1.78 percent since then. Again, this appear to be the trough. The extended rolling average is still declining, at 2.0 percent. The seven-day rolling average bottomed at 1.7 percent two days ago, and has risen by one-tenth of one percent for the last two days. This suggests that the extended rolling average rate will turn upward soon.
US Unresolved: up 1.53 percent, or 14,417, to 954,887 ill Americans today. The growth rate bottomed on April 27 at 0.15 percent, and has fluctuated as high as 2.88 percent since that time. The 7-day rolling average growth rate bottomed yesterday at 2.1 percent, and rose to 2.3 percent today. The extended rolling average growth rate continues its decline, to 2.6 percent today.
Current state of past projections:
On March 11, the US had 195 cases. The rest of the world had 7,000 on that date. The US reached 7,000 on March 21, ten days later. On March 21, the rest of the world was at 21,000 cases. The US reached that level another ten days after that, on March 31. On that date, the rest of the world was at 40,000 new cases per day. The US reached 44,000 new cases on April 24, but has pulled back since then, and today is at a level of 25,000 new cases, the result of a growth rate of two percent.
But this is under the condition of decreasing growth rates. I have asserted for weeks that a trough would develop, after which growth rates would return to increasing. I believe we are in that trough right now. Soon we will see growth rates of three percent, four percent, five percent, over an ever growing base. In this way, it does not require a huge stretch of the imagination to see 50,000 new cases per day. Indeed, I believe that this is a low-ball number for the near future.
The corresponding figure for Deaths in the United States is a current level of 70,000 and growth of two percent. If the growth rate begins to increase, as I believe it will in the coming days, then we can easily see 80,000 at three percent producing 2,400 deaths in a day; 90,000 at four percent producing 3,600 deaths in a day; and 100,000 at five percent producing 5,000 deaths in a single day.
If we look at total Cases, I projected on April 23 that we would reach 1,500,000 Cases by May 13. Here is how that projection stands today:
If we look at total deaths, I projected on April 19 that we would reach 100,000 by May 20. On April 23, I revised that target date upward to May 13. Here is how that projection stands today:
The issue is that America seems to be doing absolutely everything wrong at every turn. I have recalled more than once the awful caveat made my Dr. Birx that, “if we do everything perfectly” we would perhaps escape this nightmare with only 100,000-200,000 dead. But we have done nearly everything almost as far from perfectly as could be imagined. I foresee a breakdown of the social order coming soon. As always, I pray that I am wrong, but I fear that I am not.