Dispatch from Coronaville: Busy

The virus has been busy, but so have I. My 8th grade class elected to delay their graduation as long as they could in the hopes that we would be well on the downward side of the curve when it was time for them to cross the stage. Instead we find ourselves in the midst of the a second wave and our hopes of a "normal" graduation are dashed.  Instead we are having a two part ceremony this Sunday, July 26. First we'll have a short in-person, socially distanced, outdoor ceremony.  We'll follow that an hour later with a "Zoom Reception" where we'll do some of the activities like the slideshow, parent tributes, and special musics that we couldn't do in person.  We've been practicing every day this week, both via Zoom and in person and there is so much to do.  Tomorrow is going to be a full day as well as Sunday. To further add to the fray, Barbara's mom fell and broke her hip today.  She'll be going in to surgery tomorrow so we'll be leaving early in the morning tomorrow, to drop Babs off in Dayton so she can be there for surgery.

With all of that, I need to get to bed so we're gonna keep this short tonight.  Here's the deal:

The U.S. now has now had a total of 4,048,737 cases of COVID-19--surpassing the next million mark just over a week ahead of when I'd predicted. If the rate doesn't slow we should see five million cases by August 7.  This includes 205,601 new cases in the past three days, 19,000 or so more than previous three days.  We've also suffered a total of 144,249 deaths, 3,407 new ones in the past three days. This is almost double the previous batch of new deaths. That's 13,000 more cases and 1600 more deaths than I predicted. Based on these increase, I project 4,263,320 total cases by Sunday, July 26 and 147,711 total deaths.

New cases in Florida have now declined for three three-day periods (nine days) in a row. At 29,474 new cases this is the first time since July 8 that Florida has posted less than 30,000 cases in three days. Ohio has shown a slight uptick in cases but breaks no records, indicating we might have already hit our second wave peak. Nebraska has shown a jump this time around but still remains well shy of it's peak numbers in the spring.

Total Cases

Florida: 389,860 total cases, 1.8% of the population

Ohio: 80,186 total cases, 0.69% of the population

Nebraska: 23,818 total cases, 1.2% of the population

Florida set a record high for new deaths with total of 446 deaths in the past three days. Meanwhile, Ohio marked a modest decline, with the overall trajectory of deaths remaining steady and Nebraska posted another five deaths during this period.

Total Deaths

Florida: 5,517 total deaths, a rate of 1.4%

Ohio: 3,256 total deaths, a rate of 4%. Our death rate continues to fall.

Nebraska: 318 total deaths, a rate of 1.3%

Total Deaths