And we're back. A mere two days after the close the Dispatches from Coronaville, the Corona Chronicles has arrived. This won't be a long post--basically just catching up on my predictions from a month ago and laying out the plan for this new once a month (at least) series.
I had predicted a rougher month than what transpired. Despite my expectation of a rash of new cases due to school reopenings keeping our rate of increase steady, the increase ended up being less than projected. Despite reports of virus spreading across college campuses, so far these outbreaks don't seem to have led to wider community spread. Perhaps we'll see that yet, as autumn progresses. We just don't know. Also, the K-12 school reopenings--at least where they've happened--don't seem to have led to a new surge either. I'm not sure what will happen between now and October 5. I saw a rodeo going on this evening on our drive home from a visit with Barbara's mom in Dayton. The stands were packed and it didn't look like anyone was wearing masks. But this area of the state is Trump strong and I'm guessing they leave precautionary measures to the weepy, trembling liberals. I'm sure the virus will be intimidated by their bold stance and find someone more fearful to infect.
Here's where the numbers are today, September 5, 2020 in the United States. We've had a total of 6,259,089 COVID-19 cases, representing 1,486,602 new cases in the past month and 31% increase in the number of cases. The percent of increase dropped by more than half.This is, then, a good 1.5 million less than the 7.8 million I forecast we'd see by this time. Thankfully deaths are lower than forecast as well, though by a much closer margin. A total of 188,401 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19. That's 31,282 people in the past month, a 20% increase (only 1% less than the previous month). My prediction was off by less than 2000. With the same rates of increase I would expect 8,199,407 total cases by October 5, 2020 and 226,081 deaths.
I'm going to keep my benchmark states and add two: Hawaii, because, well, I just love Hawaii and also because it's had far fewer cases than much of the rest of the U.S., and Illinois, the home of one of my closest friends and favorite cities, and the state with the population closest to Ohio's. (I was surprised to learn that Ohio is the seventh most populous state in the union). There'll be no graphs this month but I might have something in October. We'll see.
While my prediction was way off for Florida--there were about half as many total cases as I'd predicted, they weren't far off for Ohio and Nebraska, only slightly lower than forecast. It's quite remarkable to look at Hawaii's numbers. I thought Nebraska had low numbers, but Hawaii's are minuscule by comparison. And it only has 633,000 fewer people than Nebraska. Illinois meanwhile has twice as many cases as Ohio, though a population that's only a million and some change larger rather a twice as larger. Take a look at the numbers.
Florida: 643,859 total cases, 146,537 new cases, a 29% increase. Prediction: 830,578 total cases by October 5, 2020.
Ohio: 129,785 total cases, 34,679 new cases, a 36% increase, a little more than 3000 less than predicted. Prediction: 176,507 total cases by October 5, 2020.
Nebraska: 35,805 total cases, 8,778 new cases, a 32% increase, about 900 less than predicted: Prediction: 47,263 total cases by October 5, 2020.
Hawaii: 9,448 total cases
Illinois: 250,837 total cases
Florida's deaths were significantly less than I predicted. Ohio's deaths were also just a little lower than forecast and Nebraska actually lost more people than I thought they would. Again Hawaii has had less than a hundred people die from the virus and while Illinois has lost twice as many people as Ohio.
Florida: 11,810 total deaths, 4,409 new deaths, an increase of 60%, about 4,200 less than forecast. Prediction: 18,896 total deaths by October 5, 2020.
Ohio: 4,256 total deaths, 686 new deaths, an increase of 19%. I was 135 deaths short. Prediction: 5,065 total deaths by October 5, 2020
Nebraska: 415 total deaths, 76 new deaths, an increase of 22%. This is 12 more deaths than I predicted. Prediction: 506 total deaths by October 5, 2020
Hawaii: 80 total deaths.
Illinois: 8,405 deaths
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