June 26, 2020
#stayhomebewell
“Just when I thought I was out, they PULL me back in.”
On May 01, I published the graph below:
I was predicting a continual increase in the number of new cases each day, tracking the growth globally and inferring that the situation in the United States would mirror that of the rest of the world, with a time lag of approximately two weeks, such that the U.S. would see a level of 50,000 new Cases daily.
On May 4, I published a similar prediction about the number of deaths we would see each day, projecting 4,000 per day by May 24:
I was wrong, and I posted about it on May 13, the date that my new Cases prediction had targeted (see https://stayhomebewell.org/2020-05-13/).
It turns out that I wasn’t listening to my own predictions. I was, on the one hand, predicting that the daily new Case and new Death numbers were going to increase steadily, and on the other hand going on and on about the wave-shaped form the growth rates were going to describe. Had I listened to myself properly, I should have assumed there would be a period of declining daily new Cases and Deaths, after which there would be a trough, followed by a new rise.
Well, I’m six weeks late, but here we are.
The next prediction I am not so confident about: 3,000 deaths per day by August 1.
My rationale for the prediction is relatively simplistic: On May 21, when the rest of the world reached a level of 75,000 new Cases per day is when the number of Deaths per day was around 3,000. The U.S. will be at 50,000 new Cases per day in a day or two, and if it follows a trajectory parallel to that which the Rest of the World displayed, then the U.S. might be expected to reach 75,000 new Cases per day around August 1. Hence, Deaths per day might reach 3,000. Again, I’m not confident of this. I’m sure there is a time-lag calculation similar to what I attempted on March 17 (see https://stayhomebewell.org/march-17-2020/) that could do a better job of projecting, but I don’t care to do it. I’ll just make the prediction and let it stand, as a rough benchmark against which to measure the insane reality that plays itself out.
Wear a mask.