Hardy ThoughtsBy now you may have heard of the study out of Stanford which estimates that infection rates are much higher than previously believed and so that the mortality rate is much lower. This is the type of study that we need to see more of, and I don’t want to denigrate the work done. However, […]
Two days ago, New York started including probable COVID deaths in its reports. We’ve known all along that not all cases and deaths were being reported in the numbers we see. On the April 7th, Gothamist reported that the increase in deaths in the city was far above normal ( https://gothamist.com/news/surge-number-new-yorkers-dying-home-officials-suspect-undercount-covid-19-related-deaths ) and the New […]
Let’s start with the easy part, projecting current growth out for 10 days. The 5 day running average of new cases per day is just shy of 29,000. I’ll use that for the case projection today. However, that running average has been declining over the last 4 days. If it continues to decline, I may […]
I’m starting with two questions today: Are cases still growing exponentially and to what extent is the current growth in cases due to the amount of testing rather than to the actual infection rate? The first of these questions is relatively straightforward, so I’ll start with it and do a projection. Then I’ll offer some […]
I’m seeing more posts questioning whether the savings of life from social isolation are worth the cost to the economy. Answering such a question is well beyond my pay grade, but I want to highlight some things to keep in mind while thinking about it. Let me start by saying that it’s not inherently silly […]
I’m going to lead with numbers today and follow with some thoughts on what they might mean. Growth rates for reported cases and deaths continue to decline, though that decline seems to be slowing. For example, here are the growth and death rates for the past week. This is the percentage increase from the previous […]
Growth rates overall continue to decline. To be clear, cases and deaths continue to grow exponentially, but the rate of that growth is not as fast as it was. Over the last 5 days, cases have grown at an average of about 10% per day while deaths have grown at an average of about 17%. […]
Now for some numbers. There’s some good news here. The growth rates for reported cases and deaths have been steadily falling over the last several days. As a result, our current numbers are lower than the last projection. (As a reminder, I’m now using the end of day numbers from https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en as this gives me a […]
There’s been a lot of signalling that the next two weeks are the hardest, with the Surgeon General comparing this week as our ‘Pearl Harbor’ moment. While these next two weeks will likely be worse than the last two weeks, I want to throw some cold water on the idea that these are the worst […]
April is the cruelest month. We crossed the 250,000 reported cases benchmark last night. New York state has over 100,000 cases with more than half of those within New York City. Nearly all states are experiencing exponential growth in reported cases with several near or above the 10,000 reported case thresholds. As these states develop […]