{"id":269,"date":"2020-07-24T13:09:27","date_gmt":"2020-07-24T20:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hardythoughts.com\/?p=269"},"modified":"2020-07-24T13:09:27","modified_gmt":"2020-07-24T20:09:27","slug":"cresting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hardythoughts.com\/index.php\/2020\/07\/24\/cresting\/","title":{"rendered":"Cresting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Daily case numbers at the national level seem to be cresting.\u00a0 The 7 day average has been within a 1500 point range for the last week.\u00a0 During this period, California, Florida, and Texas, by far the biggest contributors, have been flat or perhaps slightly declining.\u00a0 This is excellent news, though there are some concerns and caveats.\u00a0 Let\u2019s start by looking at some graphs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, here are the national numbers.  You can see the plateau in the blue line representing daily cases.  There\u2019s even a hint of a downturn at the end, though I wouldn\u2019t put too much stock in that yet.  It will take a few days to know whether that\u2019s a real downturn or just a bit of noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, notice that deaths are rising.  We\u2019ve had more than 1,000 deaths on each of the last three days.  The last time that happened was in late May.  Remember that deaths lag behind cases by about 2 weeks.  So even if we are seeing a crest in the daily case numbers, the expectation is that daily death counts will continue to rise over the next two weeks.  We don\u2019t know how much they\u2019ll rise, but the hope is that our increased knowledge and improved treatments will keep them lower than they were in April.  However, our case counts are more than twice what they were in April, so we\u2019ll have to wait and see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now let\u2019s zoom in to the biggest three contributors: California, Florida, and Texas.  You can see that the pattern in daily cases roughly matches that of the nation.  Each of these states has approximately three times as many cases as any other state.  Together they have been responsible for roughly 45% of the national daily case numbers.  Each of them has roughly the same number of daily cases as New York did at its peak infection in April.  It\u2019s important to note that even if they have peaked, it will take longer for the cases to decline than it did for them to rise.  Here\u2019s the combined graph for the three states..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The most notable difference between the national graph and the one for CA, FL & TX is the rate of increase in daily deaths.\u00a0 Nationally, daily deaths have increased about 40% since early July.\u00a0 However, in these three states the daily deaths have increased about 150%, more than three times as much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019d be right to look at the two graphs thus far and think that as CA, FL, and TX get their numbers down, the national numbers will also come down.\u00a0 These are the three most populous states in the nation.\u00a0 Together, they account for more than one quarter of the total population of the US.\u00a0 It makes sense that they should have an outsized impact on the national numbers.\u00a0 However, there are reasons for being cautious about putting too much weight on this viewpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, there is a large group of other states that have high case numbers and are also rising.  Let\u2019s look at states that have averaged more than 1,000 cases per day over the last week, but less than the big three.  (I\u2019m leaving Arizona out of this group.  While it does have more than 1,000 cases per day, its case numbers are declining.) While these states individually have lower populations than CA, FL, and TX, as a group they account for about another quarter of the US population.  Here is their combined graph.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The thing to note is that they account for about \u2154  as many daily cases as the big three, but their case numbers are still rising.  So even if the big three start to decline, there is a question of whether this group will rise more quickly than the big three decline.  And of course, we\u2019ve only looked at a total of 14 states with about half of the US population.  A lot of the other states are also growing, though they haven\u2019t yet reached the 1,000 cases per day average.  So, while the national numbers are strongly influenced by CA, FL, and TX, even if these three decline, we may see another peak, or a long, high plateau as groups of other states continue to rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, a lot depends on how we as a society respond.\u00a0 In April, as soon as the numbers crested there was a big push to reopen the country.\u00a0 States such as Florida and Texas were among the fastest to do so.\u00a0 The drive to reopen was driven by a combination of fatigue and politics.\u00a0 All of us yearn to be back to \u201cnormal\u201d, to be done with the whole social distancing rigamarole and back to visiting our friends and going where we please when we please.\u00a0 We\u2019re dead tired of having to worry about this.\u00a0 I\u2019m a natural hermit, and even I\u2019m tired of it.\u00a0 That fatigue means that we are more likely to take any opportunity to relax our guard because keeping it up is difficult.\u00a0 On top of that fatigue, the virus has become a political issue. Especially with a major election in the wings, decisions about how and when to reopen are driven as much by our guesses at the effects on the polls as they are by our predictions of the effects on the virus.\u00a0 This is exacerbated by the fact that politicians have an outsized impact on regulations regarding restrictions and on the information conveyed to the general public.\u00a0 One need not ascribe ill intent to the politicians to see how this could have negative results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the upshot is that yes, we appear to be at something of a crest in the daily case numbers, though daily deaths are rising and will probably continue to rise for another couple of weeks.\u00a0 But this crest is fragile and tenuous.\u00a0 If we don\u2019t, as an entire nation, follow through on efforts to contain the virus, the crest will be at best a long plateau and at worst a short breather before even higher levels.\u00a0 Remember that fall is coming, and with it comes the flus and infections that we see every year as we increase our time indoors.\u00a0 All of these put added stress on our medical systems.\u00a0 If that stress is added to already high COVID19 numbers, it may lead to worse outcomes across a range of diseases.\u00a0 The virus didn\u2019t go away during the summer, but that doesn\u2019t mean it won\u2019t get even worse in the fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I want to add some perspective to the current numbers.\u00a0 Most of my charts start in mid April.\u00a0 The reason for this is simply that Johns Hopkins University changed the structure of the data set about then and it\u2019s just easier to not mess with the older structure when I don\u2019t need to.\u00a0 Since I\u2019m mostly interested in how the epidemic is changing, I don\u2019t often need to look at what happened in March.\u00a0 But we need to not lose sight of how our current circumstance compares to what we see in a longer view.\u00a0 So here is a graph starting in early March.\u00a0 Remember early March?\u00a0 It was back when the virus was just a worry and not something that impacted our daily lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

That first rise and crest look pretty small when put against where we are now.\u00a0 The big worry is that we will become complacent, and the next rise will dwarf this one.\u00a0 It\u2019s up to us to not let that happen.\u00a0 We can\u2019t confuse making progress with having already won the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that, here is what the next 10 days may bring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Day<\/td>Cases<\/td>Deaths<\/td><\/tr>
7\/23<\/td>4,038,596<\/td>144,301<\/td><\/tr>
7\/24<\/td>4,108,904<\/td>145,418<\/td><\/tr>
7\/25<\/td>4,179,490<\/td>146,536<\/td><\/tr>
7\/26<\/td>4,250,076<\/td>147,653<\/td><\/tr>
7\/27<\/td>4,320,661<\/td>148,770<\/td><\/tr>
7\/28<\/td>4,391,247<\/td>149,888<\/td><\/tr>
7\/29<\/td>4,461,833<\/td>151,005<\/td><\/tr>
7\/30<\/td>4,532,419<\/td>152,122<\/td><\/tr>
7\/31<\/td>4,603,005<\/td>153,240<\/td><\/tr>
8\/1<\/td>4,673,591<\/td>154,357<\/td><\/tr>
8\/2<\/td>4,744,177<\/td>155,474<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Thanks for reading.\u00a0 Be well.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Daily case numbers at the national level seem to be cresting.\u00a0 The 7 day average has been within a 1500 point range for the last week.\u00a0 During this period, California, Florida, and Texas, by far the biggest contributors, have been flat or perhaps slightly declining.\u00a0 This is excellent news, though there are some concerns and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hardythoughts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hardythoughts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hardythoughts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hardythoughts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hardythoughts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/hardythoughts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271,"href":"http:\/\/hardythoughts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions\/271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hardythoughts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hardythoughts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hardythoughts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}