Coronavirus Deaths Spike
There was a lot of chatter yesterday over the “unexpected” surge in deaths.
But here’s the deal: As discussed previously, cumulative deaths follow cumulative hospitalizations, with a lag of about a week.
Thus my lead chart was no surprise to me.
Today I added Microsoft Excel generated curves. There was nothing scientific about what I did. Rather I displayed quite a bit of bias on the polynomial death trend, seeking a curve that looked right to me.
Assuming the poly curve is in the ballpark, we are looking at 80,000 to 120,000 deaths,
However, we are not out of the wood just yet as New York heavily influences the lead chart.
New York Coronavirus Cases
Despite a surge in New York cases, all of the charts show flattening action. But other states like Florida, Louisiana and Illinois may be picking up steam.
Good News
Containment is working. This current death rate pickup will not last. That is what the charts suggest.
Yet, as expected and predicted, the “I Told You So” crowd is congratulating itself on repeated nonsense this is Just Like the Flu.
The fact is, these death counts and hospitalizations are this low only because containment efforts worked even better than projected.
Why the Surprise?
Eliminate social contact and the R0 (rate of person-to-person spreading ) will collapse. And so it did.
But although the rate of spreading will soon peak and turn lower, infections, hospitalizations, and deaths will keep rising due to the huge number of people already carrying the disease with no symptoms.
Rear View Mirror Analysis
Deaths are the rear view mirror.
The flattening of the curve is the future and it may turn down by the end of the April or Mid-May even as deaths still keep piling on.
This is expected and good news.
Economic Front
The containment effort shows promise. Unfortunately, the economic front is way lagging.
In particular, I estimate the unemployment rate will hit 20% in April.
If the rate does do not get that high, the most likely explanation is an enormous increase in part-time work, with employers spreading the work around an cutting hours down to almost nothing.
For details, please see How High Will the Unemployment Rate Rise in April?
And because of the economic damage to households, the Covid-19 Recession Will Be Deeper Than the Great Financial Crisis
Please Look forward to the time you can freely travel about, just don’t expect things to ever be like they were as discussed in Nothing is Working Now: What’s Next for America?
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
A Stanford expert in medicine and a member of the NBER gives his view on the current pandemic and our response to it.
Stay at home helped reduce R0 which is great but what is the exit strategy here? If we all start going back to work it will re-surge. Without a vaccine or a lot of people getting the virus and recovering this will not go away (even that is doubtful as unclear if people are truly immune after they recover). How much longer will people comply with stay at home orders?
Mish: In view of the low testing level in the US (and the extreme time it takes for test to be finalized) the only two figures that count is death and hospitalization.
Containment is working? While I agree it cannot be hurting it would seem that the data suggests that the curve was declining irrespective of the lockdowns. Our buddy Karl Denninger reviews the data quite nicely here. It would be interesting to understand what you believe is wrong with his analysis. https://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=238864. He has always been data driven and I appreciate his insights and opinions on topics (as I do yours).
I’m Deninger on this. I have been tracking the cases and document outbreaks in the East Bay in California. Our socially distant efforts have been silly to say the least. From I can gather, the bug seems to going through nursing homes. From I what I can gathered, it doens’t to require much hospitalization for nursing home residents. This is one big media driven hysteria.
“Assuming the poly curve is in the ballpark, we are looking at 80,000 to 120,000 deaths”
Maybe not! This in today for current project deaths by Aug 4th. Lots and lots of people going to have egg on their face when the actual total turns out to be less than 50% of this lowered number!
APRIL 8, 2020 / 6:48 AM
U.S. coronavirus death projection lowered, New York fears undercount
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. officials warned Americans to expect alarming numbers of coronavirus deaths this week, even as an influential university model on Wednesday scaled back its projected U.S. pandemic death toll by 26% to 60,000.
Everybody is lying about their death numbers, we wouldn’t want the people in power to look bad would we? And, of course the biggest liars are the CCP. We really need more data, meaning we need way more testing and for it to be inexpensive and well tracked. The deaths will still come but in a trickle over a longer time. The whole idea is to slow it till we get a medical intervention. Hopefully tho we won’t have gangs of starving people roaming the streets before then. We need to get the low risk folks back to work asap in PPE’s as soon as we scale up supplies of PPE’s and tests.
An analysis of death records in the Madrid region covering the second two weeks of March suggests that the real number of coronavirus deaths could be much higher than official figures state. The records show an unexplained rise in mortality of around 3,000 people during this period.
Between March 14 and 31, Madrid’s civil registries issued 9,007 burial licenses, according to figures released on Tuesday by the Madrid regional High Court. This is more than twice as many deaths as were recorded during the entire month of March 2019, which was 4,125 according to the National Statistics Institute (INE).
The INE data is not available in 15-day intervals, but based on the monthly figures, it is possible to estimate that there were an average of 133 deaths a day in the Madrid region in March 2019, which multiplied by 18 equals 2,394 deaths between March 14 and 31 of last year.
During the same period this year, there were 9,007 deaths – an increase of 6,613. Yet official figures put the number of deaths due to the coronavirus during that time period at 3,439.
APRIL 8, 2020 / 3:04 AM
Spain’s coronavirus deaths pass 14,500, but real toll may be bigger
MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s official coronavirus death toll edged higher again on Wednesday, but questions persisted over the veracity of numbers and the main business lobby warned the economy may slump up to 9% this year.
The health ministry said 757 people died over the past 24 hours, up from 743 the previous day, marking the second daily rise in a row and bringing the total death toll to 14,555 – the world’s second-highest after Italy.
However, Health Minister Salvador Illa said the numbers were still consistent with a slowdown. The daily percentage pace of increases has roughly halved from the end of March to about 5%.
“There are no good numbers when it comes to deaths … (but) we are now in the slowdown phase,” he said.
…
“It’s not impossible, nor even improbable, that the the immune system economizes and prioritizes by choosing not to maintain lots of antibodies against a freak pathogen which it has only seen once. “
I certainly hope you are correct.
I had an early case back in January but by the time I was tested on March 19 I had long since recovered. Ten other people in my extended family got it from me and only one was ever diagnosed as having it. The numbers in the chart are the top of a huge iceberg.
“I polled family and friends if they had any intention of going back to “normal” if Trump ordered and ALL of them said no. “
That excellent comment by@PecuniaNonOlet is why there will not be a V-Shaped Recovery
Just goes to show how much people actually trust trump.
Also people who actually are able to work now are not spending much money either and surviving. They will see their bank accounts grow as well and will likely to continue on with that pattern after recovery.
Won’t grow as fast as the Fed’s pace in printing money. Before long “it’s all gone”.
See appropriate SouthPark episode.
I still predict 2,000,000 US deaths. Very few people I have spoken with are looking forward. What happens at Christmas? Do people still buy gifts? For grandparents get to see their children?
As soon as the R0 creeps back up so does the death rate.
Sadly this terrible illness is now a part of the planet. No one can imagine next year at this time. That’s the true problem.
Big take-away from British survey of patients who ended up in intensive care…
It’s a 50/50 split between live or die for those intensive care patients whose cases have reached a resolution.
70% of people placed on a ventilator (tube down the throat) in intensive care die.
50% of intensive care cases are between 50 and 70 years of age, 25% younger, 25% older. Median age 61.
Ethnic group cases are in line with population. Obesity rates are in line with population
“Eliminate social contact and the R0 (rate of person-to-person spreading ) will collapse. And so it did.”
Denninger found that the R naught declined before interventions took place. It peaked in NY the day after Cuomo intervened to shut down the state. Because of lag, R naught would not have been affected by Cuomo’s actions until days later.
Conspiracy!
Anyone who dies, having been diagnosed with COVID, is considered to have died of COVID. Even if they died of something else. The died with COVID, not of COVID.
A lot of wise people began social distancing before each state enacted its social distancing law. Using the states law creation as the time social distancing began is an inaccurate approach to calculating the effect of social distancing.
Tanner, Denninger’s point is that R0 peaked before government shut down the economy, thus it happened all on its own and the government did not need to shut down the economy.
Knut Wittkowski, PhD, said that prior history shows it takes a month for a virus to run its course and attain herd immunity.
Governments are fighting nature and guaranteeing a second wave. So why are we fighting nature? Wittkowski said to protect the vulnerable and let it run its course and die out. Instead, we now have huge uncertainty going forward.
Knut Wittkowski: “This is a flu and this will end like every other flu did before for the last thousand years.”
Yes, let’s all believe the Knut who thinks “this is a flu” … or at least we all should forget the 1918 flu like he seems to have done …
He and Denninger both assume “herd immunity” is a given for COVID-19 and that ain’t necessarily so …
Since Knut has stated “this is a flu” just how much “herd immunity” to flu has been achieved? If it has, why do we have the large numbers of cases and deaths every flu season?
I doubt Knut has forgotten the 1918 flu. I don’t think that Knut is assuming anything. Denninger has been plotting data. Math simply is. The ancient year of Jubilee and modern Kondratieff Winter are the same thing- a reset that happens over and over again, as the math never changes. Herd immunity happens over and over gain, as the math of viral transmission and herd immunity burnout happens over and over again.
“Since Knut has stated “this is a flu” just how much “herd immunity” to flu has been achieved?”
This is a corona virus. This corona virus has had some million known cases out of how many people on the planet? Locking people down is preventing herd immunity. As Knut said, protect the particularly vulnerable and send the children to school to pass the virus around and gain herd immunity. Instead schools are being closed down, which inhibits herd immunity from occurring in a timely manner.
He is not trying to measure the success or failure of social distancing with his data. He is trying to show that forced lockdowns and forced social distancing is not improving anything vs. free choice social distancing activities.
Denninger is a fool. Period
“Denninger is a fool. Period”
Not at all. He has actual data to back up what he is saying.
Look, people can be sheep but they are not stupid. When they saw videos of all the dead bodies in Italy it was a huge wake up call. I have relatives in several of the states without shelter at home rules, they are all hunkering down as well as their friends and neighbors.
People who want to go out should be allowed to. They should all sign a legally binding document along: everyone who becomes infected afterwards including themselves will not get any treatment.
Damn! I did 2-11 mile hikes in the last 4 days, climbing 2k ft each time. Lots of other people out on the hiking trails. What I find too m funny is that I will cross paths with someone going in the other direction and perhaps 6 feet away from me, but like the sheep they are, they will pull up the bandanna or mask they have as pass each other, so fearful that the CV19 cootie bug will jump from me to them, like one of those insects on the Planet Earth movies. [lol]
Anyway, my county closed down and physically locked all their hiking trails/parks but luckily, we have a good selection of Federal spaces in my area that the state and county gestapo’s can’t control (big middle finger to all of you Hitler wannbe’s). So people use common sense (or not) and do what they were always going to. Such is life.
Meanwhile, in the areas that the county can control, like grocery stores, there are lines everywhere that stretch from 15 minutes to over a 1 hour wait, many people dutifully wear their masks (not me) and try to stand 6 ft apart as businesses can only allow a very limited number of people in the store at one time.
“The containment effort shows promise. Unfortunately, the economic front is way lagging.”
The former contributes to the latter. And now, there is a study that suggests some people really are getting re-infected.
“a team of researchers at Fudan University in Shanghai has discovered that an alarmingly high number of recovered patients whom they’ve tested show low, or no, levels of the virus antibodies in their blood. That means a sizable chunk of those who are infected will be vulnerable to reinfection.”
Vulnerable to reinfection, doesn’t have to mean equally likely to get as severe of an infection. It’s not impossible, nor even improbable, that the the immune system economizes and prioritizes by choosing not to maintain lots of antibodies against a freak pathogen which it has only seen once. Yet still maintain enough awareness of it, to be able to ramp up defenses against it more rapidly the second time, than when it was entirely unknown. Just theory, though.
It is also possible that a second infection could be much, much worse than a first one. The reason is that the primary damage done by SARS-COV2 is when the immune system over-reacts, and starts destroying healthy tissue in a cytokine storm, leading to multiple organ failure. We just don’t know if a second infection will be better than the first, or worse.
It is, at least in isolated cases.
But for a line of species which have survived battles with viruses for millions of years, in aggregate getting worse at it the more experience the species gain with a virus, seems awfully hard to fit into an evolutionary model.
But, as you say, we don’t really know ’til we experience it.
It’s also possible that I could win the lottery.
Excellent article Mish. Thanks for your outstanding and early coverage of this important topic. On top of your outstanding coverage of Brexit, and many other topics, this is a wonderful website.
Mish, you and Denninger have butted heads in the past and you are on this as well. He flat out believes social distancing has had no effect and the economy should be reopened. You can find any blogger out there spouting any theory and any opinion you want. I value yours and would appreciate a rebuttal to his claims. He has what seem to be valid curves showing lockdowns did nothing to materially change the R0 rate
Krazy Karl pissed he can’t go to his favorite watering hole is all I can gather from his posts.
Does anyone have truly accurate numbers to make a claim with certainty?
Karl is very smart, but also an extremist. I’m not talking about his argument on Covid, but his repeated claims that everyone in government who disagrees with his assertions is committing a crime.
And btw, regardless of how transmittable the virus is and its death rate, it seems unlikely the Italian and Spanish health care systems would have collapsed so quickly if it were only as mild as the flu, or that the Chinese government which has utter disregard for an individual’s life would shutter its economy for months to limit its spread.
In any event, anti-body testing should make this more clear. According to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s latest article in the Telegraph, anti-body testing of a small sample of Italians shows 36% have been infected. While he presented this as good news, it also means we are not there yet at herd immunity and thus social distancing and lockdowns might be needed for some time.
Do you have a link to that ? The only articles I found from the Telegraph or AEP is one using this study
That puts 10% infected estimate,
AEP writing :
” What if the bad scenario is avoided, but not completely? The latest study by Professor Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College estimated that as of March 28 the numbers of infected were 1.2pc to 5.4pc in the UK, 3.2pc to 26pc in Italy, 3.7pc to 41pc in Spain, and so forth. These are wide ranges with vastly different ramifications.”
And a later article saying they will test 100 000 doctors and nurses. In Spain around 15 to 20% of infections are in medical staff, so they will show a larger % infected.
Also ZH has a study from China that immunity is not being found by test in previous cases. The test might not be sensitive enough, or immunity might not last.
Although not correct to compare, in US at 30k new cases per day will leave around 4k fatalities or more per day, using Spain as metric.
Here is the link https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/04/07/world-banking-system-cannot-weather-long-lockdown/
Much thanks.
Here are related discussion
and some detail
So I will stay cautious on that, but immunity and % already infected is going to be a big future debate I think.
Thanks again.
Karl has a chart that shows that R0 has come down and is almost the same now in places that have lockdowns and in places that do not have lockdowns. So this implies that the lockdowns are not helping because R0 is practically the same in places with no lockdowns. This is specific to lockdowns and not social distancing in general.
Of course social distancing works. The question is how long can it be tolerated. I hope he is right, and C19 has already burnt through the population.
The other thing is that the states that have not implemented restrictions are low population density states, so some social distancing is baked in the cake.
His argument is not that social distancing doesn’t work. You’re not portraying it accurately.
His argument is that the government SAH orders are no more effective (on an aggregate basis) than people voluntarily social distancing.
When social distancing is implemented too late, herd immunity is already achieved to a large extent, such that it does not matter much anymore.
If the # of cases would have continued to increase the government would say thank goodness we did a lockdown or it would have been worse. If the case count comes down the government says the same exact thing. In either case the government case say “see our response worked.” What for sure is working is government will grow, spending will increase dramatically, and bailouts will occur. Lucky us!
Do you believe social distancing will continue for the foreseeable future (well past 4/30/2020)? My gut tells me once society relaxes the social distancing positive COVID patients & deaths will begin spiking up again.
And should social distancing continue through the summer, how much deeper will this economic hole go?
You ask the key questions.
There will be bump in economy when stimulus checks get spent, but return to malaise as some will be still hesitant even if big drop in virus. The real problem is the debt overhang in economy … and how lenders handle. Frankly, I doubt much – if any – forgiven. A lot of “pay what you can now … and we’ll just pile what you should be paying on later”. If that true, look for a big spike in delinquencies / defaults H2 (as jobs won’t be brought nearly as quick as layoff) … which leads to credit spigot tightening … leading to economic contraction.
….’how much deeper will this economic hole go’ …Thats the 1 mln$ question…. or the 300 trln one rather (global debt)….
Hubei just “opened up.” (Not free for all, but still a lot of movement of people.)
China is the place where the virus appears most contained by now.
If opening up even there turns out to result in flareups requiring locking down again, things don’t look good anywhere else.
If, OTOH, their opening up proves less problematic, that is at least a sign that there exists an achievable end to it all.
You can’t trust anything out of China. If there is/are flare ups, they will downplay them. South Korean is the place to look at how this SHOULD be handled
The hope in all this is that there were many, many un-diagnosed cases before C19 was on the radar. If truly only 0.15% of the population has had it, it will be back as soon as restrictions are relaxed.
It may be too contagious to stop with contact tracing, so restrictions may be in place for a long time, with terrible economic damage as a result. How long will people cower in their homes in fear? Is that the way we will live the rest of our lives?
Once the major flare (current infections and previously uncontrolled infectivity) is under control. There will be the opportunity to relax a bit, but social distancing may be with us for some time. That doesn’t (at least in my mind…) mean that we can’t get restaurants and some other entertainment venues open, but it may mean their carrying capacity is severely curtailed.
On a more personal note, I’d like to take a trip that will involve air travel. I think my thinking here is a microcosm of other areas — do I want to get on a plane and sit next to anyone? Do I want anyone even in the row ahead or behind me? No, I don’t right now. And I’m not sure that will change any time soon.
This is not true of the flu, but it IS true of this new coronavirus- https://www.foxnews.com/politics/birx-says-government-is-classifying-all-deaths-of-patients-with-coronavirus-as-covid-19-deaths-regardless-of-cause
I owe this group an “I was wrong.” Someone estimated 150,000 COVID deaths in the USA and I opined that was too high by a factor of 100. That person was clearly close to correct. I really missed on how spoiled Americans would be; how Americans would prefer misinformation to correct information until things got really bad; how many Americans would make bad decisions for as long as they could (and continue to do so). I failed to predict human nature rather than believe the truth about us; I should have known better.
That being said I’ve mostly stopped reading and sharing in comment threads. I barely have time to read all of the new COVID-19 information that comes out every day to take care of my patients. (Also, when you share honestly in comment threads, random people show up on the Internet to insult you. I can take it, but who has the time for that nonsense. I have a full boat and communities with mutual respect to use up all my communication time every day.)
It is a tragedy. I am taking care of dying patients on ventilators on a near-daily basis so I will go back to that. I wish you all the best and thank Mish for regularly doing his best to inform us ahead of the curve. Good luck all.
Good for you, mr data. Keep taking care of those patients. We are all grateful for your work, and the work of everyone helping to save those who need help getting over this.
KEEP IT UP ! …and ‘break a leg’
Funny, I was joking with my son who is into high school acting that we say “break a leg,” to actors, so he should say “get coronavirus,” to me, in the mornings.
So you thought that there wouldn’t be any more than 1500 deaths and you are apologizing for not being fearful enough?
For speaking as a supposed authority and giving a bad guess, I suppose. Bad guesses like mine helped people not to take this seriously enough, for too long.
Most people who read Mish are independent-minded enough not to be swayed like that though. I guess I just made a prediction, and said if I was wrong I would come back and be man enough to admit it, and here I am. People could learn from that kind of behaviour 🙂
OK, now hopefully we can get the prior Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Dr. Fauci (among numerous others) to make an appearance and take responsibility for all the panic and hysteria they caused by predicting that deaths were going to be in the MILLIONS in the USA.
The latest models are now projecting only 60k deaths by August! Quite the drop lower, no?
In any case prepare for the worst, hope for the best is the mantra for situations of major uncertainty.
Lets just say that your Commander-in-Chief (more like two-faced-coward-in-chief) hasn’t had the courage to admit that he was totally (arrogantly) wrong when he came on TV and stated that America has only 12/11 cases and by that weekend they would all be gone and he would be hailed as the great guy he is. He also flip-flopped on masks and we all know where all this has ended. 100s of thousands of needless sickness and 10s of thousands of needless death. If only the Americans go back to thinking independently, applying common sense (covering your face is always better than not covering it, logically) and be critical of Govt (especially that unstable orange-top ape you have at the top) rather than follow their edicts like lemmings, things may have been different. Its never too late, though.
In any case. mrdata, actively saving lives is better than being keyboard warriors passing judgement on others doing better work than us at this point and so, good luck and power to you and your kind!