Dispatch from Coronaville: The Invincibility of Youth?

First we were glad it was hitting the old. Those folks were already getting ready to kick the bucket anyhow was the harsh calculus--I mean was it really the virus that killed them anyway? Come on, now.  Now we're glad it's hitting the young because presumably they are not getting hospitalized or dying so much. Any way you slice it, it's not any worse than the flu. Whatever it takes to get us back to where we want to be: The virus is overblown. We all need to calm down.

I've always kind of hoped the deniers were right, and I still hold on to that hope. But I'm going to cautiously predict that we're going to see a spike in deaths within the next two weeks, even with this current rash of infections primarily being among the young and invincible. I'm just not convinced that this is "no big deal" or that it's just "media panic."

So the COVID surge across the South and West has finally impacted our national rate of increase. It appears that the surge may be spreading to other states as well. Certainly, Ohio is feeling the heat. As of today there are 2,478,695 total cases in the United States representing a 6% increase in the past three days. This is the largest percent increase we've experienced in quite awhile. As a result my prediction was short by about 55,000 cases.  The official line is that deaths aren't increasing significantly, but I wonder if it might be too soon to say this definitively.  We do see a slight uptick in the rate of increase in this three day period, back up to 3.4% after hovering between 1% and 2% for at least the previous six days. U.S. deaths now total 124,966. That's 2,800 more deaths than I predicted.  Based on these percentages I would expect to see 2,627,417 total cases by Monday, June 29 and 129,215 deaths.

I've added one more panel to my graph but even that does not reach the heights to which Florida has scaled. I would need another two vertical panels to reach the 19,457 new cases Florida recorded in the past three days, and I've run out of graph paper. My sincere hope is that Florida's numbers will start to sink before too long and the numbers will fall back within range of my graph. Ohio has also surged, notching the second highest number of cases in a three day period that I've recorded.  Even humble Nebraska is posting a modest gain over the past three days.

Total Cases:

Florida: 122,952 total cases, 0.56% of the population. If Florida were a country it would have the nineteenth highest number of cases in the world right ahead of Canada, which has almost double Florida's population.

Ohio: 48,638 total cases, 0.42% of the population.

Nebraska: 18,424 total cases, 0.94% of the population

Deaths are on the rise as well in all three states, though thankfully no record highs for any of the states.

Total Deaths

Florida: 3,365, a rate of 2.7%. Because the deaths have not matched the massive increase in cases, we're seeing a pretty substantial drop in the death rate among those who have tested positive.

Ohio: 2,788, a rate of 5.7%

Nebraska: 268, a rate of 1.5%