On April 21, the 7-day rolling average for deaths with/of Covid was 2,225, according to the Worldomoters tracker. As of today, it is now down to 511, which, in a country of almost 330 million people, is statistically extremely small (for perspective, this time of year about 1,400 people die in nursing homes every single day). Back in March and early April, because testing was far too limited, it meant that if you were getting tested that you at least had a good reason to think that you might have the virus. Consequently, the rate of positive tests was high, and those who were found to have the virus were almost universally “sick,” with a large percentage going to the hospital. A much smaller, but all too high, fraction eventually died.
Since then several very key circumstances have changed for the better. Testing has now become extraordinarily widespread and almost commonplace, with the positive rate in most of the country shrinking rapidly, and a far greater of those positive tests coming from people who are not actually “sick” In rational world, for a portion of these people, getting tested as positive can actually be fantastic news. Not only do they now know to be extra careful in staying away from more vulnerable people (which people like them did not know months ago when testing was scarce), but they also presumably have at least some level of immunity going forward.
Now some will argue that this conclusion is premature and that in “two weeks” (which is inevitably when all the doomsday predictions are due to finally come true) that will change. While there may be a slight increase soon (one which the media will surely jump all over), the data gives us reason for legitimate optimism that, once again, the most dire predictions will not come close to fruition. There is of course a significant lag from the time someone tests positive, and when they eventually pass away. But we are now 16 full days from when this surge in new cases began, and during the “first wave” there was no indication that it would take that long for an increase in cases to translate into a rise in deaths.
On April 4, we “spiked” to about 35,000 new cases in a day, and on April 7, hit a new high in daily deaths. On May 6, we reached our highest daily death count, a number which has been steadily diminishing ever since. Theoretically, we should be seeing an increase already.
But there is another reason to believe that a large reversal of the trend may not be coming. Sweden, a country much-maligned in the media because they dared to not lockdown by government mandate, has “new case” and “death” charts which look remarkably similar to ours, and their daily death rate has recently been down to single digits (shhhh… please don’t tell our news media!).
For the record, hospitalizations are an extremely key metric here (I have argued since the beginning that it is THE most important data point), and there is cause for concern on that front in a couple of key states. However, other than ICUs in Arizona and small sections of Texas, contrary to the perception being created in the media, the hospitalization situation is currently nowhere near a crisis, and there are no situations right now where those with the virus are not able to get needed hospital care.