Dispatch from Coronaville: Milestones

It will be four months tomorrow since I posted my first "Dispatch from Coronaville".  Now seems a good a time as any to look back on the those last four months, revisit some predictions and note some milestones on this journey.

• The first prediction: I predicted that there would be 26,300 cases in the U.S. and 433 deaths by Sunday, March 22. (Score is correct if within 2000 cases or 100 deaths). Scorecard: 1/2.  There were almost 6000 more cases by March 22 than I expected. While I reported that I was wrong on the deaths I was off by only 17 and that was within the margin of error. At this time cases and death were rising at rate of well over 100% every three days, but the numbers were much smaller than they are now. A three day increase might mean 36,000 new cases whereas now a mere 6.5% increase means more than 200,000 new cases in three days. Likewise what "close" means now is quite different from what it means then. Being only 6000 cases off would be practically a bulls eye today.

I'm struck by how innocent I sounded just four months ago.  As I made my prediction I just couldn't fathom more than doubling our case numbers in just three days. 26,000 cases seemed astronomical. I had no idea. Like many people then, I thought that this virus would be fairly short lived.  I thought I was being quite conservative in thinking it would take until the end of May to get past this thing.

An interesting note about the slowing rate of increase.  The rate of increase between March 19 and yesterday (I'll be using yesterday's numbers since I got my data together then but was too tired to do the post) was 11,328%.  If that rate were to replicate in the next four months, we'd have 414,274,082 cases by November. That's a number that exceeds the population of the United States by almost 100,000,000.  Obviously that won't happen. So a decrease in percent of increase is a given. Much more significant is the number of new cases. In light of that, I've decided to stop reporting the rate of increase and start instead indicating the number of new cases and deaths. I will still use the rate of increase to predict how many new cases and deaths we could expect to see in the next three days.

• Milestone: State Data First Appears On March 28, I posted data on three benchmark states for the first time: Florida, Ohio, and Nebraska.  Florida now has close 100 times as many cases as it did then, Ohio 50 times as many and Nebraska 20 times as many.

• On April 18 I predicted we would begin opening up across the country by the end of April whether we were ready or not. I also predicted that we would see a jump in deaths and cases due to early re-opening. Scorecard: 2/2 Much of the country did begin to reopen by the end of April and early May and that re-opening has continued apace more or less.  We did see the predicted spike in cases and deaths, though it took a little longer than I thought it would. 

It's interesting to note how early the virus deniers got started on their balking about the re-opening, about taking precautions, about whether this is a real thing. As early as late March and early April a segment of the population was already done with this thing.  Interestingly the facts on the ground since then have done little or nothing to sway their opinion. They are impervious. 

• Milestone: April 21: The introduction of the graphs.  This was my first post to include the visuals of my three benchmark states. Back in those days it was just one panel for cases and one panel for deaths. 

• Milestone: April 30. The first million Americans to be infected with COVID-19 is reported on this blog. The first case was identified a little less than two months before the Dispatch began, on January 20. It took about three months for us to reach our first million. 

•  On May 30, I predicted George Floyd and the protests would be forgotten in a few weeks. Prediction Scorecard: 0/1.  I did not imagine that the Black Lives Matter would take such a strong hold on the nation as it did. In another week it will have been two months since Floyd was murdered and we have not forgotten his name. An era of sweeping change seems to have arrived and it appears this one will last.

• On June 9, I predicted as one of three possibilities, a sharp increase in cases around the country due to the protests raging around the country.  Prediction Scorecard: 1/2  There was a sharp increase in cases that began well within those next two weeks, an increase that continues unabated more than a month later. However the general consensus seems to be that the protests were not the driver of the spike. It seems counter-intuitive, yet I buy it. I don't recall Florida, Arizona, and Texas being major hubs of protests whereas people in Minnesota and New York pretty much stayed home.

• Milestone: June 11. The second million cases reached in the United States. It took five weeks.

• Milestone: June 14. Florida begins it's ride to space with its at the time eye-pooping 6,499 new cases in three days. These days those numbers would be a welcome respite.

• Milestone July 8: The third million cases reached in the United States. It took four weeks.  Could we reach our fourth million by July 29, a mere three weeks? I think that is highly probable. If we bumped up to a million every two weeks, we'd hit 5 million by August 12, and if we evened out at a million new cases a week we'd be at around 19 million people infected by Thanksgiving 2020.

One new prediction (at least I think it's new. I'm pretty sure I've said this before, possibly on this blog, possibly somewhere else).  I predict that the same people who opposed the shutdown, demanded the reopen, refused to follow safety guidelines such as mask wearing and social distancing, will also refuse to take the vaccine when one is finally developed. In short, we're screwed because of the intractable mindset of a good portion of the country.

Here's the three-day numbers recorded yesterday, Friday, June 17. We had 3,657,020 total cases of COVID-19, of which 223,864 are new cases (this does represent an increase of 6.5%).  This is 15,000 more cases than I anticipated. We have had 139,098 total deaths, of which 2,976 are new over the past three day (this represents the highest rate of increase--2.2% we've had since the end of the month).  This about a 1000 more deaths than I projected. The dream that increase in cases would not be accompanied by an increase in deaths because of the youth and health of those infected has proved to be. ..well, dead.  

My prediction is that by Monday, July 20, we will have 3,894,726 total cases and 142,158 deaths.

All three states' new cases are down in this three-day cycle, although in the cases of Florida those cases still represent the second highest number of cases in a three-day period. Florida has registered 35,612 cases in the past three days; Ohio more than 4,200. Basically both states are still experience a surge. Nebraska meanwhile also decrease but it's numbers remain below it's spring peak. There is a possible hint of a surge on the horizon for the state though. We'll see what happens in the next three days.

Total Cases

Florida: 327,233 total cases, 1.5% of the population.

Ohio: 72,280 total cases, 0.62% of the population

Nebraska: 22,361 total cases, 1.1% of the population

I've finally added more panels to my death chart. I went back and added the death spikes from the spring as well as the recent increases in Florida. As it happens I had to add an additional panel to cover Florida's new deaths over three days from yesterday. God forbid I have to add any more.

Florida continues to be the only state with deaths continuing to spiral. Yesterday marked the highest three day total for deaths the state has ever recorded. Deaths are up in Ohio and Nebraska but still within the same range the states have exhibited for quite a number of weeks. It remains to be seen if Ohio will see a death spike like Florida's.  The case increases are so much lower than Florida's (though still much higher than they have been for the state) that we may not see that surge of deaths.

Total Deaths:

Florida: 4,804 deaths, a rate of 1.5%

Ohio: 3,112 deaths, a rate of 4.3%. Because deaths are not spiking in Ohio even as case numbers rise, this percentage is slowly but surely dropping. The death rate among those who test positive has dropped in Ohio every three days since July 8.

Nebraska: 308 deaths, a rate of 1.4%