As I said on May 10, I would take a new look at the data at the end of June.
FORTUNATELY, I WAS WRONG
May 10
“Watch the daily numbers of deaths. If the plateau remains constant, with 1,800 deaths per day, then by June 1 (23 days) we will have an additional 41,000 deaths, for a total of 120,000; and by June 30 (52 days from now) we will have an additional 53,000 deaths, for a total of around 170,000. If the plateau begins to decline, we will see less, if the “opening up”
increases the total, as the CDC has been warning may result in a rate of up to 3,000 deaths per day by June 1, we may see as many as a total of 210,000 deaths.”
As of June 30, there are now a total of 130,159 deaths in the US.
Since May 10, that is an increase of over 50,000 deaths or an increase of over 60%. This represents an average of just under 1,000 per day over that period, and the rates have been decreasing.
However, my fears of over 53,000 deaths in June was wrong. There have only been a total of 21,454 deaths in the US during the month of June.
A few observations:
Since the “reopening”, the number of cases per day has reversed course from a steady decrease to a significant increase. Because the vast majority of citizens who went back out into Bars, Restaurants, Parties, Entertainment, etc., have been below the age of 50, the increases in infections have primarily been seen in those age groups.
Rather than observe the CDC guidelines for activity, individuals took the initial reopening as license to go back to “normal” and ignored social distancing and masks. Politicians, anxious to revive their economies did not adhere to the recommendations for data provided by the CDC and moved directly through the phases of reopening without stopping to determine if the guidelines for each move had been reached.
Because the new cases were among a younger cohort, there is a hope that the new infections will result in little or no death. However, this is simply not true. We have seen that for people over 65, about 14% will die when compared to cases identified (btw, this number is only 9% if you look at people between 65 and 80). For people between the ages of 18 and 50 the percentage drops to 1%, which is still 10 times that of influenza. More importantly, the virus does not know that it should stop infecting people after it has been transmitted, and those younger people infected during the past month will certainly begin to infect older people, and those cases will be seen in the weeks ahead.
The increases we are seeing is NOT a result of testing increases.
Here is a very interesting statistic:
When you compare the number of deaths to the number of cases reported, and compare those results worldwide to the numbers in the US you see something particularly interesting:
Worldwide, out of the 10,630,000 cases there have been 515,000 deaths, or a death rate of 4.8%.
In the US, out of the 2,730,000 cases there have been 130,000 deaths, or a death rate of 4.8%.
This suggests that increased testing in the US has had NO effect on the determination of deaths and has NOT skewed the results.
The next 30 days will be critical. How many hospitals will be swamped by the increasing case load? Will the deaths increase in parallel to the increasing cases? Will the tremendous advances in protocols to treat the disease result in lower death rates? Will those advances affect the days of hospitalization?
Reality exists whether we want it or not.