We start the day at 801,000 corona virus cases and 42,980 fatalities. At our current pace, we will reach 1 million corona virus cases in 8-10 days. That’s a number that Trump won’t be able to deal with politically. It’s easy for ad makers to work with.
We had almost 2000 fatalities yesterday with 5 states posting triple digit numbers. At a rate of 1500 deaths per day, we will reach 60,000 in about 11 days. However, keep in mind that we still have long term care facility deaths sitting out there, and most of those numbers do not appear to have been allocated to any of the counts. That would add up to 7000 additional fatalities to the counts, which puts us close to 50,000 already.
We’re going to blow past 60,000. Based on an implied fatality rate of 9%-12% (current reported deaths divided by the number of cases in the system 10 to 14 days ago), based on a 1 million case load, we’re looking at a fatality range of somewhere between 80k to 120k fatalities. (That’s actually a conservative and discounted estimate). If we keep adding cases at this volume per day (20k to 30k cases) you can pretty much add 800 to 2000 fatalities per day for the next 60 days. It seems more likely that 100k-200k (which Birx predicted) is going to be fairly accurate. However, I can now see casualties exceeding 200k given the sheer volume of cases that we’re putting into the system. There’s no cure for this virus. You stop the deaths by stopping the infections. That only happens with testing, isolation and contact tracing combined with social distancing.
One “real American” dies for every 2 or 3 of “those people.” And the “real Americans” start out with a number advantage anyway. So by election day, he’s wiped out a lot of Democrat voters. True Trumpers should be willing to sacrifice a few family members.
Yesterday Trump touted the now much worn death estimate of 50,000>60,000, going so far as to claim it would be closer to the 50,000 number. Seems to me if we have few rough days nationwide 50,000 could be hit by the end of this weekend. And numerous epidemiologists are asserting we’re very much mired in the middle of this pandemic, with the worst probably still over the horizon. I don’t see any damned way we avoid at least 100,000 deaths before this nominally burns itself out.
I’d say we’re at 50,000 deaths already with the long term care facility data. HHS is going to finally report those numbers b/c the deaths have become too big to suppress.
Too true – Wilson didn’t have all of the possible advantages of Drumpf (kinda typical, that) and was in WWI (which was, for US soldiers and sailors, largely fought in France, Belgium and the Atlantic.)
Nonetheless, as a raw comparison to date, Spanish Influenza still takes runs ahead in overall deaths.
This isn’t to downplay or minimize the monumental damage which this administration’s mishandling (whether incompetent or malicious is an open question) of the corona virus pandemic has brought. It is, unquestionably and by the standards of our time, criminal negligence and, likely, misconduct.
In 1918 no one had much idea what a virus was. Even DNA had not been discovered. In that context, there was a hard limit on what anyone could do effectively.
The federal government in 1918 (before the New Deal) had fewer agencies that could be assigned to deal with a pandemic. There was no CDC, for example.
There was a Surgeon General and he did his job. (He also had a good record: In Cuba, for example, he had eradicated what was then called “yellow fever.”)
There was also a US Public Health Service, and it, too, did its job with whatever funding it had.
To cut to the chase: Wilson was not a complete fool, and did not stand in the way; whereas Trump sort of is, and obviously does.
Of course you are correct. Deaths are certainly under reported at this time to the tune of several thousand. Major cities report typical historical “die at home” numbers of “X”, and then report those numbers are now 5 or 10 times “X”. Health experts speculate it is reasonable to assume the number of deaths above “X” are in the majority, if not wholly, attributable to COVID. I’ve read reports NYC’s emergency services typically respond daily to 25 deaths at home, and for weeks that number was roughly 225. If only 150 of those excess deaths are COVID, and that has gone on for a month, that’s about 4500 under reported deaths in NYC alone. Extrapolate that scenario across every city in the nation and you have tens of thousands of masked deaths.
This analysis is probably close to accurate. it explains why Kemp’s moves in Georgia are so foolish. It also explains why Trump’s efforts to protest stay at home orders are so stupid. it also explains why black and brown people are so at risk. Never forget that the people who can most easily shelter in place are white middle class people and white retirees. Trump’s encouragement of white retirees to break self containment is particularly ironic. The cohort of essential people is weighted toward minority groups, as is the group that has been laid off. More exposures mean more infections.
That’s a smidgen over a 5% mortality rate. I suppose being as the coronavirus has a way of finding its way into nursing homes with increasing frequency, that may have something to do with the higher mortality rate. They are reporting many nursing homes will go out of business because of this pandemic. They were a low profit, low margin business to start with. What will take their places or fill the void?
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Never mind, I just realized the answer. Private equity funds will take them over and we’ll all live happily ever after. Like they stepped in and bought so many homes during the housing crisis.
CDC is now adding those figures which is why we made the jump from the mid 20k range to above 40k last week. We’re going to have more jumps. In a way, CDC and HHS are taking advantage of Trump’s demand to open up to push for better reporting on fatalities, because they’ve all told him that opening up will blow up in their faces if fatalities and case numbers grow so they need an accurate count to forecast in advance and give Trump a chance to plan for his political messaging.
