Dispatch from Coronaville: The End is in Sight

Well, the end of this blog series anyway. I've just added new panels to my graphs and I've decided that when I conclude this next panel on September 3, 2020, I will end my regular "Dispatch from Coronaville" posts. It doesn't mean that I won't write about this extraordinary moment in world history anymore. It does mean that I won't post graphs and number updates every three days. At that point, coronavirus will officially become normalized on my blog and any posts on the virus will be just part of my normal posting regimen (which--lets be honest--had pretty much ground to a halt in the years leading up to the arrival of COVID-19).

 It would be nice to imagine that the the end of this series will also mark the end of the virus. I admit I kind of thought that by the time we reached the end of my graph, there wouldn't be a need for another panel. I figured the trajectory would be clear, represented by a more or less smooth bell curve.  We'd be entering the tail end of this as we began the summer.  I think that's what our leaders thought too and interestingly, that's how they've been planning the "re-open" as well.  It seems we've collectively decided to ignore the actual trends in favor of the trends we want. 

But there's no steady downward trend.  What we have is, at best, regional spikes and declines averaging out to a national plateau. Today we have had 2,253,172 cases of COVID-19 in the United States, an increase of 3.7% over the past three days. This is only 804 fewer cases than I predicted.  Further evidence of the plateau is that for awhile now my projections have been quite close to the actual outcomes.  The percent of increase has remained quite constant. Likewise my predicted number of total deaths was over by only 342 at 119,515 deaths, a 1.5% increase. Based on these percentages, it seems we're likely to see 2,336,539 total cases by Tuesday, June 23 and 121,308 total deaths.

I thought I might have to add a third vertical panel to my graph due to Florida's manic COVID surge. I did not predict I'd come within one interval of having to add a fourth panel. 11,078 new cases in just three days! Unbelievable. I shudder to think that a fourth vertical panel will be necessary for Florida or any of the other states. This massive jump has moved Florida from it's usual spot at 8th or 9th in the nation to number 7. Ohio continues to trend upward (though it's now in 17th pace nationally after hovering between 15th and 16th place for quite awhile), while Nebraska showed a significant drop in the past three days.

Total Cases

Florida: 93,789 (!!!) total cases, 0.43% of the population

Ohio: 44,262 total cases, 0.38% of the population

Nebraska: 17,591 total cases, 0.90% of the population

Deaths are up in Florida and Ohio over the past three days while they've dropped back to 10 in Nebraska. I would expect to see a big increase in deaths in the coming weeks in Florida as the case spikes bears it's awful fruit.

Total Deaths:

Florida: 3,143, a rate of 3.4%

Ohio: 2,697, a rate of 6.1%

Nebraska: 249,  a rate of 1.4%