The Trump administration coronavirus team doctors, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, estimate there would be 1.6 million to 2.2 million deaths if no preventative measures were taken.
On that advice, Trump extended his recommended shutdown until April 30. This lowered the estimates of Fauci and Birx to 80,000 to 200,000 deaths.
For discussion and comments from Trump and the doctors, please see Trump Worried About 2.2 Million Deaths, Extends Shutdown Through April
My chart above projects the current slopes until April 12 then flatten.
Everyone is Guessing
It’s important to note these are not my “predictions”.
Rather, it is my projection of what would happen IF the current trends hold.
I made such an estimation on March 22 and was blasted for it.
Covid Tracking Project
On March 22, I started a series of charts based on data from the Covid Tracking Project.
On that date I received an email accusing me of hyping the data because “It is not presently feasible to get to 100,000 cases in the US by March 26th.“
The email also stated “These publications do more to incite hysteria and grab clicks than they provide any basis for decision-making.”
Here is my March 22 post: Covid Tracking Project: How Long to 1 Million US Cases?
My trendline at the time suggested we might hit 100,000 cases on March 26.
We topped 100,000 on March 27. I was one day late. Apologies offered.
The amusing thing about my initial post on this data series is my specific statement about trends.
“Those are not my projections, those are observations of what would happen if the current trends last that long at the same pace.”
What If?
Assuming a crest at the same rate of progression, US deaths will hit 10,000 deaths on April 6 and something in the neighborhood of 50,000 near Easter.
I suspect that is on the high end. But no one knows, especially me.
I also suspect the 80,000 to 200,000 projection by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx is purposely on the high side, just to be safe.
If so, the total best guess would be in the range of 100,000 to 140,000 or so.
However, deaths will not drop to zero on the crest or in the next month. Moreover, the threat might very well return in the Fall.
Question of the Day
- Now that Trump finally believes this is worse than the Flu, will his followers believe it?
- Bonus question: Will Trump and his followers pretend they believed this all along?
Meanwhile
- Retail Grinds to a Halt as 47,000 Stores Close
- Unemployment Claims Spike to 3.28 Million, New Record High
- Coronavirus Trend: One in 10 of Those Hospitalized Die
Nothing Working
Also, please consider Nothing is Working Now: What’s Next for America?
Other than those kinds of things, It’s No Worse Than the Flu™ .
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Since we can’t track the virus behavior due to lack of testing scaled random sampling, here’s how we will know things are better: When we see the top of the test curve (the infection peak will be long over).
Not the best way, but that’s what we get for our government getting caught with their pants down – lack of ability to test (no, Party in charge doesn’t matter, this is long time in making).
So it looks like we are up to 3167 today. This is now above the model I posted which had forecasted a high of 3116 today.
My model had 2727 yesterday, and 3434 for the end of the month. We are already at 3175, so we will blast right by mine as well, probably to 3700 or so. As I posted above, the death rate is starting to rise significantly in New York, Michigan, and New Orleans. As of yesterday, the places with the most cases/million were:
New York 3059
New Jersey 1504
Louisiana 761
Mass 718
Washington 590
DC 565
Conn 558
Michigan 549
By comparison, Italy is 1683 and Spain is 2019, so New York is higher than either, and New York City is probably higher still.
All the way to 3889 today. Things are definitely turning worse, and the death rate is rising significantly, just as it has done in other countries.
Not sure how you get those numbers? We won’t see a decline until we get to herd immunity, which is 60-80% of the population infected. The medical system will break long before that.
Why is 2020 a year filled with disasters? It is just the 3rd month & we have too many issues worldwide. Now, it’s COVID-19. Wait a sec, if not investing in BTCINVESTLIFESTYLE., how would it be planning the unseen circumstance of financial, economic regress. This came too sudden after build up since last year. I hope an effective cure is discovered soon.
It appears that, as predicted, the death rate is starting to rise in certain areas of congested hospitals. New Deaths/New cases, and cumulative death ratios for a three areas that seem to be rising:
New York: 4.2%, 2.0%
Michigan: 5.1%, 2.8%
Louisiana: 7.0%, 4.6%
Entire US: 2.8%, 1.9%
I’m sure the US armed forces / CIA have their spy satellites focused on all activity to assess the real condition in China. If shipping all of the sudden improved, then the finance media would alert everyone.
Feel free to correct this: Is there a possibility there have been millions who already beat their infection and symptoms were so mild they never went for treatment and therefore the exponential graphs we see are completely wrong?
It’s possible, but assuming 10% are serious cases then that would be a lot of cases hiding out as flu or similar and incorrectly assessed. The tests in UK showed no vast background of cases in the run up to the outbreak as well.
Another possibility is that a weaker strain did infect many people, I expect that would have registered on testing the likes that UK did. Maybe what we are seeing now is a weaker strain , maybe there is or isn’t immunity between strains, and within certain timeframes.
Many unknowns.
@Ebowalker , glad you raised that point.
Personaly getting tired of all that histeria, at least some people keep a calm mind.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bCnT2owc1Z8&t=22s
Anything is possible. This is, and will continue to be, a developing situation, and one where no one has all the answers. The only way we know it’s true destructive power is if some country chooses to simply ignore it, and lets it spread freely without restricting it until it has run its course. I think the consequences of that would be so grim that no country will do that. Several have started out to ignore it, but as the situation became grim, they locked down.
Yes it’s possible. But this doesn’t matter. The big question I cant find an answer to is are people who get and recover from covid 19 able to transmit it even after they are better. If so 100% of the population will eventually get it and people will continue to get sick. Anyhow this isn’t about how many survive, it is about trying to lengthen the time the medical systems of world have to respond and keep up with incoming cases.
From what I read, 80% of people tested are still negative, so they have not been infected yet.
Since they are testing only people with symptoms, they are going to to get a higher “positive” percentage than if they tested a random sample of the general population.
None of the expert’s predictions add up.
If R0 for C19 is 3, C19 will burn out after about 2/3 of the population has been infected. At this point only one of three potential victims will be susceptible to a contagious person, effectively reducing R0 to 1. At R0 below 1, the number of new cases will contract. About 2/3 of the population becoming infected agrees with some epidemiologists predictions. This means that before this is over, 220 million people in the US will be infected with C19. It makes sense. There is no “herd immunity.”
Your chart shows a ratio of about 1 in ten victims requiring hospitalization. This means that there is a pool of about 22 million people that will eventually require hospitalization. If the hospitals can accept 100,000 new cases per day, 22million cases could be cleared in about 220 days or 8 months. This assumes a curve that is very flat across the top, with short tails. There is already a lot of squeaking at 20000 cases per day. I don’t know what the capacity of the hospitals is. It is an important question.
If the goal of shelter in place and stay home orders is to bring the level of infection low enough to manage with contact tracing, then C19 will be an issue for decades.
If the goal of shelter in place and stay home orders is to bring the level of infection low enough to keep the hospitals from being overloaded, 8 months of quarantine may be optimistic. Before 8 months have passed there will be trillions of dollars of defaults in mortgage, student and business loans as well as corporate bond defaults. What will be left economically after this is over? How much rioting and civil unrest will there be? Trump is right. This is not sustainable.
I’m asking for some analysis into how wide the curve will be after it is flattened. The area under the curve will remain constant.
Best Regards & Stay Healthy
Small error maybe:
Assuming 100 000 hospital capacity for serious cases.
Assuming serious cases need one month of that care.
Hospitals will be able to take in 100 000 a month, not a day.
220 months is quite a long time.
….
Your question is a good one though.
That’s my problem. Does the healthcare system implode at 100000 hospitalizations per day? I don’t know how long the average stay lasts, or how many beds are available to C19 sufferers. My gut feeling is that 100000 new cases per day will overwhelm the system and still take 8 months to clear. That’s why I’m asking questions. Thx for the reply.
All I know is that once in intensive care, that mostly last weeks.
I agree 100 000 cases a day would overwhelm if it were for more than a short while. Italy or Spain are under 10 000 cases a day (talking confirmed cases, not including untested) for populations less than a sixth that of US, so roughly eq. 50 000 cases in US per day, and it overwhelmed them after a week or two at that number.
As I’m just reading this and it is pertinent, I will link it here. This is a latest study where they estimate a CFR and IFR. I’m not including it for those though, but to point out that I have seen two studies like this now – they use Chinese data, then count the infection rate of people who have left China, and then adjust Chinese data with it.
I.E. You have say 2% CFR from China and 1% of population infected, but of people who left China 2% were found infected, so they assume an extra 1% of Chinese were infected but not recorded, and so they halve CFR to give 1% IFR.
I find it somehow disingenuous to be honest, they avoid using just western data, so they have under 60 in the west amongst a return group that was tested at CFR of 1.4 % (so presumably also 1.4% IFR in under 60s) , but they don’t use that data just the infection rate, and apply that to China data to obtain a lower IFR, and an age parametric that they then apply back to western data to generate a different western IFR.
You will see studies and claims like these, don’t just accept them because they seem technical. The only clear way of calculating is by looking at reliable closed data sets, and we do not have any still, not Diamond Princess, not Iceland, not Vo in Italy, as they are either incomplete or not closed yet.
So I stay with a CFR (and IFR) at over 1% , and I always personally calculate the CFR the way IFR would be calculated, that way I know I am working with a lower bound
Apart that there is some data on hospitalisation in that study.
“If the goal of shelter in place and stay home orders is to bring the level of infection low enough to keep the hospitals from being overloaded, 8 months of quarantine may be optimistic.”
How’s that? The first hump of cases flooding hospitals in the US is projected to have subsided by June for all states. That’s based on the state-by-state projections found on the site by UW scientists that Casual_Observer shared. https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
Not sure if such projections assume continuing with extreme social distancing through summer….
Subside by June, based on what? Some talking head’s message to the public? Every prediction about how long this will take is replaced by a new extended one. I’ve done a bit of math, and the numbers don’t agree with the verbal diarrhea on TV. I’ll take my numbers.
The unanswered question is what percentage of infections are not counted? I’m suspicious that the confirmed cases are only a small percentage of the total. That would bring the end date to all this in greatly. I haven’t heard any “expert” address this, though.
Two quotes come to mind:
2 We had to destroy the village in order to save it.
” The unanswered question is what percentage of infections are not counted?”
We don’t know because they aren’t counted.
See my reply to NewUlm above. Asymptomatic are maybe 30%. Untested are anywhere from 0 on the Diamond Princess to 99% in some countries.
So what you are figuring is actually the speed of the curve, and all I know is that it is ahead of what we know for sure by tests, whether higher or lower.
As for CFR, IFR, serious cases as a % etc. , it is nescessary to mix match different sets of data, those where there is much testing or a lot of certain outcomes (not just initial numbers like a thousand new cases found, but exactly what the result is for those).
So I place CFR/IFR above 1% somewhere, and nescessary hospitalisation above 10 % somewhere, and intensive care over 1% as well. Sure you can calculate better figures for the last two, as I’m following the contagion more than the care response needed.
“Subside by June, based on what? Some talking head’s message to the public?”
The IHME doesn’t appear to be mere “talking heads,” but epi professionals at the University of Washington. Maybe if you click through the site a bit it will answer some of your questions about their projections.
This article tries to calculate the true number of infected in Spain, using different methods, referencing UK studies also
They estimate ten to twenty times the number confirmed there are infected. This ratio will depend on how much testing there is, and where on the curve the epidemic is.
You raise many good points. Yes, there is no assumption of herd immunity, and yes, this could be around for many years, returning now and again to cause problems. That is why the long term solution is a vaccine. That will create a herd immunity without the masses of deaths and hospitalizations that would otherwise be necessary.
Note that there are many other unanswered questions. One you asked is how many people develop immunity without ever having shown symptoms? A good question, and no doubt the answer is not insignificant, but it is doubtful that it is high enough that we can ever hope to achieve herd immunity without a vaccine. Another question is, how long does the immunity last? With other coronaviruses, the immunity is not a lifetime immunity, and wears off after some period of time. Thus, once there is a vaccine it may be a case where you get a booster shot every few years.
Will it subside by June? Perhaps. If social distancing does a lot of good, and it will, combined with Coronavirus being less active in the summer (if it is), it might vanish by summer. Of course, it also might return in the fall, or with the end of social distancing. Until there is a vaccine, it will continue to be a matter of concern.
“trillions of dollars of defaults in mortgage, student and business loans as well as corporate bond defaults. What will be left economically after this is over? “
All the same stuff as before…..
Houses don’t go poof just because a mortgage on them defaults. Students don’t become ignorant again just because student loans do. And factories don’t disappear just because a bond payment is missed.
Furthermore, if everyone just sits inside playing with their foot fungus for 8 months, very little is consumed. Which makes up for the fact that very little is produced Since wealth lost is wealth added minus wealth consumed.
You’ll have depreciation (dust and mold in housing, brittle gaskets in factory machines, and students forgetting stuff), but aside from that, hardly some form of calamity.
All the factories, people, etc were there in 1929 and also in 1932, but in 1932 they were a lot poorer. Do not underestimate the power of a credit collapse.
In 1932, at least if you were among the poorer to begin with, becoming “a lot poorer” could start getting genuinely problematic. As people weren’t yet that far removed from the risk of outright starvation and/or freezing to death.
Today, things would have to get really bad, before a few bowls of hot soup a day, starts getting meaningfully scarce.
In some/many third world countries, those kinds of concerns may be realistic. Much less so in the US.
“hardly some form of calamity”
Tell that to the millions who suddenly have no income for the next few months, but still have to pay for rent and groceries.
The real calamity is that no one has any savings. This applies to both individuals and businesses. It is an effect of the system evolved by the rich and connected to primarily benefit those who are not so foolish as to save for a rainy day.
If you have no money to pay rent with, you could try not paying rent……
I don’t want to tell people not to, as you never really know how deep the rot goes anymore, but will they really get evicted in the midst of a lockdown/pandemic? You’d hope police officers would have more important things to do, than show up in force to throw people who are supposed to shelter in place, out of their place….
I’d also be surprised if the number of Americans starving to death from lack of basic groceries, will ever get all that high, before either government or charities step in to provide the, what?, $10-50/day or so required to keep someone from dying of starvation while sitting inside an apartment.
And as far as I’m aware, utilities ( I know mine are) are already promising not to turn anyone’s power and water off for the coming months. With big commercial and industrial users largely offline, residential usage are accommodated largely by base production.
Again, as long as people don’t consume much, since they don’t have the opportunity to, they don’t strictly have to produce much, either, in order for the wheels to keep going ’round.
The problem is that debt and taxes do not stop along with everything else. If this goes for too long, millions will default on their mortgages, millions will see their life’s savings evaporate, millions will go bankrupt. I don’t see the banksters or the tax collectors forgiving us our debts. Both of my parents went hungry in the depression. I’m not saying we’ll all starve, but there will be huge dislocations and we will be generally a lot poorer afterwards.
Debt owners will be a lot poorer if people can’t afford to pay their mortgages. As those will be defaulted on.
With the same number of houses, and the same (actually smaller, hopefully not by too much by the time this is over…) number of people, there cannot be any increase in systemic homelessness.
End result being, same number of houses, same number of people, less debt. Meaning: The exact same houses, just with lower mortgage payments attached to them. Hence the same houses cheaper. That’s a good thing. Cheaper always is, unless one is a rent seeking leech.
The important part being to prevent bailuots. Such that housing debt owners, who again owes money to someone who again owes money etc., etc., all the way up to the Fed, have no choice but defaulting all the way to the top. Hence being liquidated, and regurgitating inventory into a market where “everyone” is broke. Instead of being able to sit on the mortgages forever, and hence never relinquishing the ability to rent seek from people who just want a roof over their heads.
IOW, just reboot the whole pyramid at random. As random distributions beat the heck out of ones explicitly biased towards rent seeking leeches.
So if Casual_Observer is right and we end up with 80 k deaths but that is the same that the CDC deaths from flu in 2018 then what ? This is a virus and it takes out the people on the margin of life like viruses have forever for the most part . It puts weakened people over the edge. Look at the maps people living in rural areas hardly affected . For numbers like Newsome saying 26 million in Califirnia alone and others we are going to have to get a rapid acceleration or explosion of cases for extended time to even remotely get even close to some of the doomsday predictions that are now on record . Time will tell
More importantly, will the ones that died rise three days later, and will people give them their stuff back?
here are Covid 19 FACTS: https://www.nejm.org/coronavirus?query=RP
MIT has Posted Free Plans Online for an Emergency Ventilator That Can Be Built for $100. https://twitter.com/sinanaral/status/1244107247959056384
Another little stat from the current numbers is the correlation between Cases/M and Urbanization. 81% of people in the U.S. currently are classed as living in an urbanized area (numbers from Census.gov 2010 data set), but of course, different states have different %’s, (e.g. D.C. is 100% urbanized, whereas MS is only 49%), and each state is recording different Cases/M (e.g. WV 69.2 but NJ is 1,507).
Excel can calculate the correlation between these two sets of numbers, and currently it is 30.5% – so there is currently slightly higher Cases/M in more urbanized states than more rural ones. I’m tracking this on a daily basis and watching for trends.
Equally interesting is the make up of those who are sick in the US, where nearly 60% are bellow the age of 50. Suddenly not so amusing for the FOX News talking heads who all assume that “they’re parents are the ones who will have to make a sacrifice for the sake if the economy…interesting to see their reaction when they see how the US stats are different than the rest of the world.
BTW the reasons are unclear, maybe its because of the population’s general health, but it seems that serveral who have died were healthy 40 year olds.
In South Korea 60% of those infected were under fifty also, not sure how many of those became ill though.
OK, following Mish’s extrapolation (i.e. these are NOT predictions, just simple mathematical models) currently 0.043% of the U.S. population has tested positive (let’s start with that, and all numbers are from Worldometer – the same site Mish is using).
The current growth rate for the whole U.S. is 23.1%/day.
Plugging these numbers in [=log(target/0.00043)/log(1.231)]
0.1% (330,000 positive tests) = 4 days
1% (3.3M) = 15 days
10% (33M) = 26 days
Let’s say, conservatively, there are 5 undetected cases for every detected case, the numbers become:
1% (3.3M) = 6.5 days
10% (33M) = 17.5 days
Worldometer currently is tracking death/positive test as =35337/741908 = 5% of positive tested die. Thus in 15 days we could have 165,000 potential dead or dying.
As I said, this is a model, not a prediction. The numbers for some states are even scarier. Days to 1% positive test in whole population:
NY – 6.25 days
MA – 8.5 days
IN – 12/5 days
ID – 13 days
Until we have antibody testing and mass active testing the predictions are pretty bad and will shift like the wind. We still don’t have a denominator!!!! Iceland has tested 4% of its nation and 50% of cases have no systems, which tracks the Diamond Princess, 30% with an older demographic, then an additional 50% of Iceland’s cases had mild systems that would have never presented to a doctor.
What does that mean for the US? To start every model needs to add 2x the number of cases (estimate – like we do with the flu) to start. This will lower our death rate but also speed the time to peak. We are seeing social distancing work, but not lower R=0 below 1. With such a high silent attack rate, it seems all we can do is slow not stop C19 (until we can ID every case).
Lulukith at reddit posted a good reply to that
“Very impotent point. These 50% are a combination of “truhly” asymptomatic people and presymtomatic People . There is also a number of People with very mild symptomes witch These people themself overlook easily and don’t even consider these as symptomes. A week ago, there was Study about an entire small Italian town (3000 people) . They had numbers between 50-75%. Also only tested once and no follow up question days later. Recently i say a Video of south Korea. They estimated between 20-30%. Also tested 1 time and i think 2 days later came back to look for new Symptome.
So in my meaningless opinion the real number for ‘True ‘ asymptomatic people is between 20-40%.”
For CFR Iceland is at around 0.2 now, with 25 of a thousand cases in serious condition also. So I don’t drop IFR below 1% – a very “consequential” number.
Diamond Princess is over 1% and has 15 people in serious condition for two months now, so there you are talking IFR of around 2% except possibly for circumstance with the most care available. Age adjusted it comes down a little.
Quite pools of transmission will be a big problem as you say.
Iceland data:
“Now that Trump finally believes this is worse than the Flu, will his followers believe it?”
Sure they’ll believe it. They would follow Trump into Hell were he stupid enough to lead them there.
And, the TDS-afflicted will hope it’s even worse (except the ones who get it). Gov Gretchen Whitmer is threatening doctors in her state who are thinking about prescribing hydroxychloroquine for it because Trump mentioned it.
Ultimately, this virus is going to help Trump politically. It’s natural for Americans to rally round their ‘leader’ in a crisis. They rallied round Jimmy Carter during the Iranian hostage crisis until election day – a year later. Had the crisis ended before then, history might be very different now.
Trump got like a 3-point bump from this, and it’s fading already. Throw 100,000 dead into the picture and he’s toast. By way of comparison, the moron GWB got a 40-point bump from 9/11.
If the DNC could manage to put forward a non-despicable candidate, it should be easy to campaign against Trump’s obviously atrocious mismanagement in January and February. But, they can’t.
We should have some historical perspective. Most are aware of the 1918 flu epidemic, SARS, and H1N1, but there are two lesser known 20th century flu epidemics in which 100,000 Americans died. One in 1957 (H2N2) and one in 1968 (H3N2). The impact of those deaths would of course have been much greater than COVID-19, due to a much smaller US population.
Hopefully United Laboratories in Telluride can get us some data for those of us looking farther into the future.
If preliminary studies are true & anti-bodies degrade within 3-6 months, we could be looking at an even deadlier round two come September on.
A good portion of people that survive the 1st infection have compromised lung health, re-infect them and survival rates plummet.
Mish, I’d be interested in an investigation into the anti-malarial drugs and the antibody test, esp. availablility. Both of those being out and available will give us a better sense of being able to blunt this better and/or see how these numbers compare to the true number of people infected. I sure hope we are on the low end of these numbers and get back to arguing and second guessing decisions because we were too aggressive vs. the other way around.
there is a study of these very drugs going on in Montreal (Canada) right now. It will take several weeks/months until they know if they work. It also seems that the anti malaria drug had to be taken into conjunction with another drug…
Saying this will “peak” in two weeks doesn’t sound that bad when you say it.
However, with cases doubling roughly every two days, that means 7 doubles in 14 days.
If we stay in that track, that means a total case count of about 8 million by 14 April. And that’s in the US alone – with most of them concentrated in major population centers.
The reality is that if we remain on that track, things will begin to come apart at the seams WAY before we reach reports of 8 million cases.
Let’s face it – people in the US aren’t used to real hardship or being told what to do. Around here, we give the orders. So when we are told that some little virus is going to run our lives for a while, we say “fuck that” and go about our business.
Imagine the confusion when reality sets in. Now think about the emotions that will follow that confusion. Think about what will start to happen when Grandma or Grandpa (or someone’s child) either can’t get into an ICU – or get moved out of one because they are triaged as “unlikely to survive.” Think about what emotions will take over when doctors need an ICU for someone unrelated to CV, but can’t get one because of someone infected. Think about how people in areas with lower rates of infection will react when they see people in cars from areas with super-high infection rates.
These are all things that are actually going to happen if nothing changes and the case load continues to double every couple of days.
But “two weeks” sounds pretty good when you say it.
Currently the doubling rate is 3.3 days for the whole U.S. (but it ranges by State from 1.9 days for WV to 5.0 days for NE, and of course, both have different starting points wrt Cases/M). However that alternation does not impact the points you are making.
I think the “screw that” attitude is one of the healthier aspects of Americans, especially when applied to government telling us what to do. My heart has been warmed by the “GFY” reaction to WHO/CDC bullshit guidance to NOT wear a mask when grocery shopping. I wear a mask every time I am out. My wife is sewing masks to donate to e.g. doctor’s offices to give to patients when they first arrive. Someday a history book will have an entire chapter on how the WHO had the gall to tell people to NOT wear a mask in the early part of the 2020 pandemic — it will be hard to believe, but true!
It’s also true that many are not taking the danger seriously and staying home when they should be. Suspect this will change per city as local conditions become obvious.
Austria has told all citizens to wear masks when out.
{sniff] So sad.
On a bit of a tangent. Once when I was in the US i needed to get some medicine for my son. Something that cost $15 in my country, was $60 and I had to get a prescription, so cost $160. A friend just told me she need some eye treatment, $260 was the best price in town in Houston. I can get the same thing in the local pharmacy for $15. Why is it so?
Because the US politicians sold out their constituents to the pharmaceutical industry for a bag o $.
Two words – crony capitalism.
It’s obvious that there have been more exposure to the virus than what is being reported as “positive” tests.
How many people have actually been exposed to the virus without much effect?
That number is the answer to the question of when to “open up” again.
Instead, the only thing we can count somewhat accurately is the number of cases admitted to hospitals.
Even the number who die is a vague one, because there are those who die without investigation as to the cause. We may talk about China, but Italy and Spain have people dying away from hospitals, especially in nursing homes (some abandoned), that have not been recorded as caused by the CV. In the places it gets bad, that is what happens–whose job is it really to count the dead and enumerate the reasons? And there are far more reasons to not have a number.
We’ll get a truer number in the coming years of the probable death toll from an “excess deaths” analysis of the population.
So we can predict an oncoming “number of deaths” but that will realistically cover only those who died in a hospital setting while being actively treated for the virus.
I don’t recall where I read this, but the chance of contracting Covid19 from a single exposure is about 1 in 20. Thus, for a person to infect 3 others he needs to have about 60 contacts with other humans over the 3-5 days where he is contagious without symptoms. If he cuts the number of contacts to under 20, he will infect on average under 1 other person, and it will die out. Of course, some people are “super-spreaders” and shed more virus than others, and have a higher rate of infection per contact. The 1 in 20 is an average.
The important thing to remember is that, just because you encountered someone with Covid does not mean you are infected. It also means that the less total people you come into contact with, the better your chances of not being infected.
“It also means that the less total people you come into contact with, the better your chances of not being infected.”
That works for sexual diseases also!
you can’t get an accurate death rate until all cases resolve. China even by self report still has over 2000 unresolved cases. the complicated cases (severe with pneumonia) can take months to resolve. we won’t know our death rate from this peak for months sadly.
JoJo needs to bottle and sell his Super-Optimism Infinity Vitamin
Try living in Washington state! I told all the stores, & customers, late Feb, “to practice social distancing; just in case of maybe later”! I was very surprised, people actually did that! Pat on the back. I went to at least a half a dozen or more, stores all over town, showing them. I think it really helped. Since Beaverton, OR was just across the bridge 30 min drive, they had the 1st case in , Oregon . We needed to be prepared. Seattle was 2 1/2 to 3 hrs away. I live right across the bridge, in Clark co. Our hospital’s already have a triage out front, & we have had 5 deaths already. Try wondering where those cases are at, & your trying to avoid those people. As of March 14, I went off the grid. No tv, no movies, no radio, unless I get in the car. Silence, doesn’t feel golden, as they say. Wishing you, a long life. Be safe, & like me, wear MASKS, gloves, & sunglasses or glasses. Bummer, my contacts been out of my eyes since then. No touching your face. Well, minimal. 😎. As I’ve already been called a germaphobe , the 1st part of March! Hey. Take those temperatures twice daily, & keep records. Then, write down when you go out,. Every time I do, I start another 14 days. Just incase to clear people. That way they know I didn’t get sick from them, or vise versa. Started March 9. It cleared Feb people, now 1/2 of March. Now, I have to start all over today. I went to the store! Crap! Lolllllkoolololol
This is Dr. Fauci’s exact quote:
Fauci Says 200,000 U.S. Deaths Possible (10 a.m. NY)
U.S. coronavirus deaths could reach 200,000, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” More than half of the new cases are in New York, he said.
“Looking at what we’re seeing now, we’re looking at 100,000 to 200,000” deaths, “but I don’t want to be held to that,” Fauci said on CNN. “But I don’t just think that we need to make a projection when it’s such a moving target that you could so easily be wrong.”
The U.S. has almost 125,000 confirmed infections with more than 2,000 deaths.
In a similar vein I predict the stock market will set a new high in the next two months, surpassing DJI 30k. I will follow Fauci’s lead on this prediction: [roflol]
“but I don’t want to be held to that,” Fauci said on CNN. “But I don’t just think that we need to make a projection when it’s such a moving target that you could so easily be wrong.”
The problem is reality will set in slowly. Just like it has for Trump. It will get worse in April.
I don’t disagree. The question is are we responding proportionally to the threat. My contention is that we are not.
You don’t understand risk management of the medical systems of the country. You must be okay with unnecessary deaths.
As Dr Fauci says, it’s a projection so that they can plan accordingly. What’s so wrong with that?
Because it is fanning the flames of fear! People don’t read articles, all they do is read headlines. They see huge numbers and miss the nuance. Fauci and like are trying to scare people doing what they think needs to be done but yet in the MSM, no voices featuring anyone questioning the projections or the responses are allowed.
“.. will his followers believe it?”
Not followers. Cultists.
Cultists always believe what the cult leader says. It’s the definition of a cult.
A cultist who stops believing what the leader says is called “cured.”
Do the models and extrapolations try to take into account the different cities being on different paths with different peak dates? Many cities (such as mine) must be several weeks behind Seattle and NYC.
It appears the U of Washington (IHME) projections that@Casual_Observer linked in another comment does so.
New York: Subways – Check; Lots of elevators – Check; Lots of office people in closed up areas – Check. hallways and common lavatories. Input info >>>>>>>> ching >>>>>>> clunk, clunk >>>> kerchunka clunka ping!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Cha ching –
You’re screwed.
Add to that, high rise buildings with shared HVAC systems. If the virus aerolsolizes, it can go from one apartment or office to another via HVAC. That may have been the method of transmission in the Cruise ships.
Do residential buildings have shared HVAC in New York as well? That’s plain nuts. I thought the, always and everywhere undersized, shared exit ducting in parts/all? of Europe was crazy….
I don’t know the answer to that, sorry.
On the subject of HVAC: Does anyone know how the millions of units in all those highrises in Wuhan are ducted? People have been locked up in them for long enough now, that they could provide meaningful data on inter unit contagion risks in highrises.
Perhaps even shed some light on the degree to which aerosolized contagion is a meaningful problem.
OTOH, if it turns out that the commies build better engineered Soviet concrete blocks by now, than what even the Fed’s most favored debasement theft recipients can expect from their 7 figure Trump Tower digs; this place really, really, really has been sucked dry and left barren by it’s 50 year national obsession with nothing but facilitating FIRE racket theft in favor of useless leeches.
Yep. Check the link below I sent. It actually has predictions by state.
Though they show mandated social distancing in the visualization I don’t see it in the model. FL comes to mind, they are busy trying to block people from other states while they ~5000 cases in state and very little mandated social distancing. They could spike there.
I think it is based on whatever voluntary social distancing and mandatory stay at home orders are in place per state + resources per state in terms of ICU beds etc.
This is depressing.
I don’t really think we have anything close to an accurate account of anything here in this country except a death count. I follow those more for an accurate account of where we were up to 2 1/2 weeks ago. Where we go with that?
Based on this China has deaths in the 5 figures. Far above what they officially reported. They are probably missing people or have a mass grave somewhere.
Hard to say. The problem with all those articles is the proposition that all deaths in China can only be attributed to Coronavirus alone. You can NOT die from anything else. Either it’s Coronavirus or you live forever. Heart attacks, cancers, regular deaths, those can’t happen. Unless you know how many people die daily in Wuhan from all sorts of diseases, etc, other than coronavirus, you can’t know for sure the extent to which the Chinese are lying.
Missing people due to disposal via cremation instead of burial. Latest circumstantial evidence provided by number of urns delivered to crermatoriums which indicate over 16000 deaths in Wuhan alone and possibly over 26000 deaths nationwide. Who knows?
I track this model and it has been correct so far. It takes into account resources and shortages. The forecast is about 81,000 deaths mostly by mid summer.
I think we are ahead of that pace thanks to silliness in New Orleans, Chicago, and Florida beaches
Mish the model is on pace and accurate so far to within each day’s predicted range. Today we are at 2488 now. It predicted somewhere between 2400 and 2700. I do think it will be somewhere between 80k to 100k by June 21st. If the restrictions are not kept in place Faucis prediction of 100k to 200k is realistic. Anyway my real prediction is America is in trouble until mid September based on sources I read. It will be a long summer.
Thanks for sharing that.
I hope it levels off in June like the forecast, but it seems very optimistic. I imagine a best case scenario that we can get enough testing and tracing to reduce the new cases and deaths to a per capita level somewhat comparable to what Korea’s is now, but even that is probably wishful thinking.
That’s going to be disappointing for all the people who have been predicting millions of deaths in the USA but of course, later began qualifying those predictions with “assuming we didn’t do anything” and similar foolishness that they didn’t mention originally.
I think even your 81k is going to prove high.
And when the postmortems start being done as to whether shutting down the economy was worth it, a low number of deaths is not going to be a helpful metric.
They mentioned them. People just have poor comprehension skills. This model assumes current measures in place. The medical system will break in a lot of places. 80k deaths is with a shutdown. 2M would have been with no restrictions. You arent the judge or arbiter of whether it’s worth it or not. Neither am I.
I would think it’s always assumed predictions are always based on if we stay the current course. With predictions the predictor is screwed either way, either he was too high and caused undue panic or too low and looks like an idiot for not knowing the future somehow.
Your comment makes me think of someone I know who at 30 years old was close to 400 pounds and was told he would be dead by 55 unless he started eating better and exercising. Guess what? He shaped up and got healthy, and did he thank his doctors at all? No, instead he would spout that doctors told him he would be dead by 55 and here he was alive and that doctors were full of crap.
Thanks for that link. That model matches my own expectations very closely, and shows this passing the seasonal flu about April 11th. I was thinking it would be April 9th, so they are a little more optimistic than I am. I hope they are right.
They are way more optimistic than I am, longer term, though. They show COVID completely defeated by June, which is possible, but only if it slows for the summer, and I don’t see any evidence that makes me confident that that will happen. Even then, the model only runs through August, and doesn’t address a second wave in the Fall, and that second wave could be worse than the first.
Does the error band change as new data enters the model?
Actually there is a huge variance. At the end we could either be at 36k deaths or 152k deaths.
Well, surely we deserve a better than average death rate; We got the millions of college kids out of the bars and off the beaches before the end of March…
I can answer that bonus question. Trump already is claiming he did. And his followers believe what he believes. So if he believed it, and they believe whatever he believes, then they must have believed it, too.
We have yet to see a country “beat” this virus. China has been blatantly lying since mid-February, and related places like Hong Kong and Singapore are still having difficulties. Nobody is out of the woods.
From everything I’ve read, it seems like South Korea and the UAE have done the best job being proactive. I’d keep an eye on them to see a best case scenario. South Korea just reported another 78 cases and 6 deaths roughly an hour ago.
We (the US) and most of the world didn’t take this seriously at first, so our final tally will be worse. It’s still too early to expect victory and many places in SE Asia, South America, and Africa are trending upward, so globally cases will rise for some time.
The trouble with Mish’s estimates is that number of infected is based on tests, but in reality many more will be. I’m thinking the US is not as far behind the epidemic as some say, because very crudely a hundred times the number of fatalities at the start of an outbreak is giving closer to true infection numbers. So the US has maybe 300 000 (maybe more) infected presently. This number can increase rapidly though as well, or stall with measures….or increase rapidly even with measures. I guess we will find out.
Where US is now reminds me of a report from Italy, a nurse was talking of how unreal it was having just set up a fully equiped hospital unit and not having any patients – this being at the start there. It was soon full.
It reminds me of Spain also a couple of weeks back, cases taking off and half the population on edge, the other half questioning or ignoring.
Well, take the measures asked of you in good faith, be responsible, and just possibly the US won’t end up like Spain or Italy.
SK and the UAE: Also Taiwan. I gotta go with Taiwan as the gold standard. They probably had the highest travel volume with the PRC, pre-Wuhan, and so might be expected to be a mega-Italy, all else being equal.
Comparing Italy/Spain to the USA is like comparing the proverbial orange to the apple!
Not so. The metric of contagion is contact, no matter which country or people. Look at how isolation measures in Italy and Spain compare with in the US, I think you will find them about the same.