Jun 9, 2020

Dispatch from Coronaville: The Next Two Weeks


The next two weeks will be very telling, I believe. One of three things could happen:  

We could see a sharp increase in the number of new COVID-19 cases, and another few weeks after  that,a sharp increase in deaths, as protesters and police succumb.  

We could see our current numbers maintaining more or less, but not dropping. This might indicate that the protests did enough to halt the decline but not enough to cause a significant increase.

We could see the overall national decline continue--some hotspots notwithstanding--indicating that the worst of the virus is over for now.

These numbers are actually from yesterday.  I gathered the data but was too tired to do the post.

As of yesterday, there were a total of 1,969,786 total cases of COVID-19 (a quick check of the most recent data indicates we've added 20,000 to that number today). This represents an increase of 3.6% over the previous three days and about 14,000 less than I predicted. As for deaths, as of yesterday there had been a total of 110,951 deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19 (we've added 1200 more today).  The good news is that this represents  a 1.5% increase over the previous three days and 2,500 fewer than I predicted.  This is the lowest percent increase in deaths we've recorded so far.  With these percentages in mind, I'd predict that by Thursday, June 11, we'll surpass the two million mark with 2,040,699 total cases and 112,615 total deaths. 

New Cases

Florida continues to surge. New cases dropped but only to the third highest number since April 3 (and the state has added another thousand cases today). Meanwhile Ohio and Nebraska continue what looks like an honest-to-goodness downward trajectory. 
Here's the data on total cases:
Florida: 64,896 total cases, 0.3% of the population
Ohio: 38,837 total cases, 0.33% of the population
Nebraska: 15,752, 0.8% of the population


New Deaths

If there's any patterns to the deaths from this disease, it's that of macabre heart rhythm, up and down, up and down. I'm glad to report that all three states are posting some of the lowest numbers of new deaths they've had (Florida, second lowest number of deaths, Ohio fourth lowest, and Nebraska third lowest). However I should note that Florida has already posted as many deaths today as it did in the previous three days which means that Thursday's numbers may not look so good for the Sunshine State.  Meanwhile today Ohio added only 17 deaths. and Nebraska added three, also as many deaths as they had in the previous state, but Nebraska has been known to go a day or two without any deaths, so we'll see.
Total Deaths:
Florida: 2,711, a rate of 4.2%
Ohio: 2,404, a rate of 6.2%
Nebraska: 196, a rate of 1.2%

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