Corona Chronicles: Pandemic-aversary

 It's been a year.  

One year ago yesterday, I wrote my first "Dispatch for Coronaville", a few random thoughts about the pandemic that had upended our lives during the previous week. Reading those early entries now, I seem so naïve. I had no idea then that we'd be dealing with this a year later.  Thankfully it does appear that we are finally looking at what could be the downward side of this cataclysm. 

This will no longer be my work view come Monday morning

I'm fully vaccinated and while I continue to abide by the general public precautions--wearing a mask and social distancing, I feel a new sense of freedom knowing that I'm protected.  This past Thursday, I got my first haircut in more than a year (not counting three "emergency" cuts by my wife in July and December 2020, and February 2021).   We are visiting Barbara's mom this weekend--without the need for masks, social distancing, or 14 day quarantines in advance. We were planning to go to a church service this weekend with Barbara's mom in Dayton--early so that we could still do our weekly family church on Zoom at 11:30 (today was our 52nd service, a full year of meeting as a family for church on Zoom), but then Barbara's mom ended up needing to have an unexpected surgery and so in-person church was out.  Still, we look forward to being able to go to church some time in the near future. 

 And on Monday, just over a year after I left, I will return to the classroom.  My 8th grade students will return to in-person learning for last two months or so of their school year. Honestly, I've gotten pretty used to teaching remotely. I've always known that I'm the kind of person cut out for working from home.  I haven't missed dealing with behavior management; it's nice to be able to not worry about providing "supervision" when kids are working independently, allowing me the ability to get things done.  But I'm happy for the kids, and they're happy (well most of them, there's a few not enthused about having to get up early).  And of course there's the commute, and getting the boys ready for school will involve more than yelling at them to get out of bed five minutes before class starts.  But overall, I'm glad to be going back.

So what happens next? I don't know. I plan to keep this monthly Chronicle going until September, when it will have been a year since I started this iteration of my tracking of the pandemic. Hopefully there won't be a need for it after that.  We will see.

As of yesterday, March 19 there have been 29,720,510 total cases of COVID-19 in the United States. Another 2,016,428  new cases were added since February 15.  What a change from a year ago.  The rate of increase was much, much higher--over a 100% increase in cases every three days!  But the numbers were so much lower. It's worth noting the extent to which the toll of this disease has become normalized.  The number of cases and deaths a year ago, that led to lockdowns and toilet paper hoarding are now dwarfed by daily cases and deaths that we celebrate as signs of the virus's decline. It's heartening to see another significant decrease in the number of new cases added this month. This month's numbers represent a 7% increase in the number of new cases from February to March, and about 3 million fewer than I predicted. The latest reports suggest we might be hitting a plateau but I hope that the decline will continue, even if at a more gradual rate in the next month.  There have been 539,954 deaths altogether from COVID-19, with 54,472 of those occurring in the past month. This is a 11% increase. This is 41,066 fewer deaths than from COVID than we had the previous month, and it is also 66,898 fewer deaths than I predicted and represents about half as many deaths as we experienced from January to February.  I expect to see the number of deaths continue to drop as well as the cases continue to decline.

If this rate of increase continues at its current pace, I  would expect 31,800,946 total cases by April 19 and 599,349 deaths. 

Cases are down by half in all of our benchmark states this month: On average about 10% of the population of each my three original benchmark states--Florida, Ohio, and Nebraska contracted the virus over the past year. Nebraska now has more people getting COVID every day--219--as the total number of people in the state who'd had gotten the virus by the end of last March (192), and Florida and Ohio are pretty close to the same. So while we've made "progress" we are nowhere near back to where we began. We are headed in the right direction, but we are far from having "arrived." 

 I had hoped to see all my percent increases in the single digits and I'm glad to report that has happened. Florida just cleared the bar, and the other states have registered increases significantly below 10%. I would love to see all states' rate of increase below 5% by next month.

Total Cases:

Florida: 1,999,249 total cases, 171,884  new cases, an increase of 9%. This is 175,315  fewer cases than I predicted.  Prediction: Florida will reach 2,179,181 total cases by April 19, 2021.

Ohio: 997,336  total cases, 57,986 new cases, about half as many as in the previous month and an increase of 6%. This is 92,310 fewer cases than I predicted. Prediction: This time Ohio joins the Million Case Club with 1,057,176 total cases by April 19, 2021. I've predicted this benchmark for three months in a row and Ohio has failed to meet that prediction so far. Here's hoping for a fourth month of failure in a row. Indeed may we NEVER join the Million Case Club!

Nebraska: 206,470 total cases, 8,744 new cases, an increase of 4%. This is 11,029 fewer cases than I predicted: Prediction: 214,728 total cases by April 19, 2021. 

Hawaii: 28,678 total cases, 1,906 new cases, an increase of  7%. This is 1,307 fewer cases than I predicted. Prediction: 29,985 total cases by April 19 2021

Illinois: 1,222,043 total cases, 55,963 new cases, an increase of  5%. This is 60,645 fewer cases than I predicted. Prediction:  1,283,145 total cases by April 19, 2021

Deaths are down as well in all of my benchmark states.  This confirms my prediction that deaths would drop across the board as cases continued to decline. It's interesting to note that percentage of those who contracted the virus who ended up dying remains essentially the same for Ohio and Florida as it was a year ago.  Nebraska's death rate has ended up lower than it was a year ago, around 1% as opposed to 1.4% in March 2020.

Total Deaths

Florida: 32,650 total deaths, 3,872 new deaths, an increase of 13%. This is 2,459 fewer deaths than I forecast. Prediction: 36,895 total deaths by April 19, 2021.

Ohio: 18,340 total deaths, 1,994 new deaths, an increase of 12%. This is 8,467 deaths fewer than I predicted.  Prediction: 20,541 deaths by  April 19, 2021. As expected deaths were much lower than I predicted due to last months correction to the death count.

Nebraska: 2,243 total deaths, 120 new deaths, an increase of  6%. This is 155 fewer deaths than I predicted. Prediction: 2,378 total deaths by April 19, 2021. 

Hawaii: 449 total deaths, 26 new deaths, an increase of 6%. This is 118 fewer deaths than I forecast.  Prediction: 476 total deaths by April 19, 2021.

Illinois: 23,304 total deaths, 1,138 new deaths, an increase of 5%. This 1,521 fewer deaths than I predicted. Prediction: 24,469 total deaths by April 19, 2021.