May 26, 2020, 11:15 pm
I’m tired. I’m posting tonight only because we reached 100,000 deaths. On April 19, I projected 100,000 dead by May 20. On April 23, I revised that projection up by one week, to May 13. As it happened, today was the day. If the trajectory continues along the line it has described since April 8, we will see 200,000 by July 29.
The same methodology projects 3,500,000 cases by the same date.
The news reports that while the country is preparing to open in a matter of days, a number of states are seeing increases in their numbers of cases and deaths. So, while the early heavy hitters of New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts are on the decrease, I still expect that we will see an increase in the rates of growth of cases and, therefore, deaths.
On May 13, I showed a projection of how the numbers of deaths would look if we started at a growth rate of one percent, followed by daily increases of 0.1 percent. Under that scenario, I projected 102,000 deaths by today’s date (see Day 13 in the graph below). In fact, the growth rate has been declining by approximately 0.1 percent and is currently 0.77 percent, which is higher than the previous two days.
I’ll post again if and when the growth rates turn upward.