May 29, 2021
#stayhomebewell
Welp, when you’re wrong, you’re wrong. And I was wrong. This is the best wrong I could ever hope for. So good, in fact, that I’m afraid to jinx it.
However, in my last post (https://stayhomebewell.org/april-17-2021/), I stated that the fourth wave of COVID-19 was upon us. I made that prediction based on the extended rolling average of the growth rate in Unresolved cases in the United States having bottomed at -0.6 percent from February 19 through March 18, and then having risen to all the way back up to -0.1 percent on April 15. The sustained increase in the growth rate in Unresolved for a full two months, peaking at that -0.1 percent rate, had me convinced that I was breaking news of a return to increases in the number of active infections in the United States in real time. This is the graph I posted:
However, as the current update to that graph shows, the rate returned to negative growth immediately after my update. Here is that graph as it stands today:
Interestingly, the corresponding graph for the growth rate in Unresolved cases throughout the rest of the world (ROW) shows a similarly declining trend, despite the recent surge in new Cases in India.
Since the number of Unresolved Cases in the ROW had inflected (changed direction) on March 4, and it appeared that the number in the United States was inflecting on April 15 (44 days later), I made the mistaken call that things were in fact shifting. It appears to have been another head fake. Please, let it be so.
According to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1918_spanish_flu_waves.gif, the 1918 Influenza pandemic comprised three waves over 10 months:
Note that the preceding chart is depicting deaths per 1,000 population. The following chart, which I’ve constructed, shows the number of deaths per day in absolute terms, with a 50-day moving average trendline overlaid:
What stands out to me is that, in the 1918 pandemic, first wave was the smallest, the second was the greatest, and the third was in between. In the current pandemic, the third wave has been the greatest, and the second was the smallest. Also, the 1918 pandemic resolved over a period of roughly ten months. The current pandemic has persisted now for 17 months. Let us hope that there is no fourth wave.