The US currently has 156,633 cases. It’s clear that we’ll pass 160,000 cases sometime today. The bad news is that we’re 2 days ahead of the original projection I did on the 14th. That projection had us at 160,000 on April 1. The good news is that we’re 24,000 cases behind the projection I did two days ago. Our growth rate continues to decline. There is some reason to think that social distancing is beginning to have an effect on the numbers. There are lots of caveats, and that’s the other post I’m working on. But even with those caveats, I think we’re seeing some progress.
I revisited the growth rate numbers. Over the last 5 days, we’ve been growing about 21% per day. I’ll use that as the growth rate for this 10 day projection.
3/30 156,633
4/1 229,327
4/3 335,757
4/5 491,581
4/7 719,724
With luck and continued effort, we’ll continue to come in lower than the projection.
On the other hand, the fatality rate has been creeping up a bit. That may just be statistical noise or it may be that we’re seeing the early effects of a straining medical system in NY and other hot spots, it’s still a bit early to tell. Over the last 5 days the fatality rate has been about 1.7% of the case rate. I’m going to use that for this projection. Keep in mind, these numbers are just 1.7% of the projection above, I’m not basing them on the growth rate of reported deaths at this stage. If the fatality rate keeps creeping up, I may change that.
Two days ago I projected 2,695 deaths for this morning, we’re above that number and have 2,877 reported. I’ll use the reported number for today, but the 1.7% number for the rest.
3/30 2,877
4/1 3,899
4/3 5,708
4/5 8,357
4/7 12,235
I’m not going to be at all surprised if these turn out to be low. The fact that our cumulative fatality rate is rising means that our per-day fatality rate is likely rising even faster. If some of the recent growth is due to stress on the medical system, that could increase even faster. I’ll try to keep an eye on that.
Keep up the social distancing. It’s likely having some effect. That effect should become stronger over time. Here’s a promising story about the effects of social distancing in Washington. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/us/seattle-washington-state-coronavirus-transmission-rate.html
Thanks for reading. Stay healthy and stay home.