COVID-19 July 20, 2020

As I reported yesterday, the exponential rate for new cases was decreasing.  That trend continues with the latest data coming in with a doubling rate now just under 20 days.  Cases are still going up and deaths are still going up.  The only silver lining is that things are climbing a little more slowly than they could. More and more state governors are backtracking, which should help going forward.  Did they learn their lesson?  Probably not.  Once (or if) numbers drop back down, you can't just re-open without additional well coordinated measures.  Duh.

COVID-19 July 19, 2020

The rate of exponential growth of new daily infections is slowing.  It is still exponential, but the rate of exponential growth has been getting smaller based on the 7-day average.  There is no guarantee that this will continue, but that's the trend for now.  The doubling rate for new infections is 19.4 days.  If things stay as they are (they aren't, things are slowing), that would mean that we would have over 130,000 new cases each day in about 19 days from now. 

Deaths continue to increase, on average, but I'm not seeing an exponential growth. That's good and hopefully that will hold.  However, with the still exponentially growing number of cases it seems likely that the death rate will start to pick up. 

COVID-19 July 18, 2020

I ran out of steam yesterday and didn't post the daily update.  You didn't miss much.  Here are the numbers as of yesterday.  Still going up, but note the 7-day average has fallen slightly below the best fit exponential curve of the daily rate of infections.   This is a good thing and may be an indication that the curve is starting to flatten just a bit.  Perhaps the resurgence of mask wearing and re-tightening of some restrictions is starting to show?  More needs to be done.

COVID-19 July 16, 2020

Rather than posting commentary today I'm going to leave this link to an Atlantic article.  It's a bit long, but it comports with most everything I've written since day one.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/second-coronavirus-death-surge/614122/

COVID-19 July 15, 2020

This will be an important week.  I'm looking to see if there is any flattening of the curve in this second wave.  The doubling rate for new infections has been edging down ever so slowly.  At one point it was 15 days.  It is now closer to 17 days.  Not a big difference, but when dealing with exponential functions those small differences can be a big deal.  Mind you, cases are still growing exponentially.  It's just a matter of how big of an exponential growth.

You may have seen the news that hospitals will now be required to send their data directly to the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department rather than the Center for Disease Control (CDC).  Given the dishonesty and lies that spew out of the federal executive branch on a daily basis, there is a lot of suspicion that this change is intended to make cooking the books easier.  It is no secret that the President wants lower numbers in order to justify reopening everything.  I would urge everyone to remain cautious, but we should all be careful about inferring a conspiracy.  I am reasonably confident that if any funny business goes on the data will tell us.  There are statistical tests and other numerical methods for determining whether data fit within a pattern of prior information.  If the behavior of the data changes going forward we should be able to see that.  We'll just have to wait and see how things go.  As it is, the data and reporting has been inconsistent and problematic.  There is a slight chance things could get better.  I doubt it, but let's see. I am unsure how this change will affect my data source, if at all.  I have been using information from the State Health Departments that are aggregated daily on Wikipedia rather than the CDC or other institutions. 

COVID-19 July 14, 2020

On June 26, I wrote the following:

"It seems that at least some of the criminally negligent state leaders have suddenly become aware of the trends.  Time to hit the pause button on re-opening, they say.  Nope.  Wrong answer.  Today's data is a reflection of the conditions two or more weeks ago.  Pausing simply means that the conditions that allowed for the explosion of new cases will remain in place.  So, we'll tread water for a few more weeks until the situation becomes catastrophic, and then we'll probably see some back-tracking to more restrictive policies."

And so, here we are.  California is the first to not just pause re-opening, but to reinstitute restrictions.  Meanwhile, the less enlightened states like Florida, Texas, Arizona, and Georgia continue marching into the fire.  All of this was predictable.  Inevitable.  The virus is a simple biological machine.  Replication follows simple biological laws and those biological laws are represented by exponential growth functions.  There is no way that reopening is going to work unless it comes with other measures that include massive testing, tracing, and rapid localized quarantine. 

"Today's data is a reflection of the conditions two or more weeks ago".  I wonder how many dead will be piled up in the hospital hallways in a couple weeks in those states that continue with their ill-advised policies.  Those dead are baked into the cake.  Nothing we can do about it.   How long before those states will finally reverse course? 

The numbers from yesterday should be close to the low spot for the week.  I think the numbers from the rest of this week are likely to be simultaneously shocking but also not surprising.  Totally predictable.  Completely criminal.

COVID-19 July 13, 2020

The numbers are in for the day and I'm going to post tonight instead of tomorrow morning.  Today and tomorrow should be down days in the weekly cycle, but that didn't stop some hefty numbers from coming in.  Still, we are down in both new cases and deaths for today, as expected. 

If we continue on the current trend we will see 100,000 new cases per day in about 10 days from now.  Per day. 100,000.  Wow.  Deaths are continuing to increase, on average, but the trend is too recent to be able to make any meaningful predictions other than "up".  The 7-day average of daily deaths is currently just under 700.  That's over three, full, 737-800s augering into the ground and killing everyone aboard every day.  I suspect things would be different if the news was showing three planes crashing to the ground every day for days on end.  Total deaths are now at or above 125,000 depending on what data you follow.   There were about 48,000 total combat deaths during the Vietnam war.  So, we're at about three Vietnam's now in less than 6 months.  Grim.