US COVID Update (End of month update)

Declining trends despite opening.

End of the month and a weekend, so this a good time for an overall evaluation of the month.I'll start with the national situation then point out a couple of states.

First, the new deaths have declined fairly steadily since 5/1 from about 13,000/week (or almost 2000/day) to <6000/week or about 900/day. And that appears to be still declining as well. And the decline has been slowest in the large outbreak states that have opened the least. Given Gov Cuomo's amazement at finding than 58% of his new cases were coming from people confined in their homes perhaps that wasn't such a good idea.

New cases show routine dips every weekend, but after declining the first week of May they have flattened at around 21,000/day. On the other hand, new tests have increased from about 250,000/day to over 400,000/day. It is not obvious that the reporting of combined numbers of viral and anti-body tests has been resolved, but for sure the number of viral tests has increased (especially in states that still have large numbers of cases) quite a lot while the number of cases found has declined then flattened so the % of tests found to be positive is decreasing pretty steadily. As a nation we seem to be finding about 7% positive results, and reports are that many fewer people are even asking to be tested, so the actual rate is almost certainly lower than that.

And most of the epidemic is still concentrated in NY/NJ/MA/CT/PA and now IL, but MI has left that group. I look at MI a bit closer since I live there.

First, the MI data has been 'difficult' from the start. The reporting has been very uneven, especially on weekends. It has at times been reported in some odd formats. Having said that, the 7 day MA is still reasonably indicative of reality I think. (The peak of cases and deaths was pretty clearly around 4/15-4/20.)

Since May 1, new cases have decreased on the 7 day MA from about 6900/day to 2500/day (and have declined below even that for the past 4 days.) New deaths (again there is a tendency to list as a COVID death many that most of us wouldn't) from an average of 100+/day to just over 30/day.

The new cases have varied a lot due to either 1) the number of new tests, 2) the reporting of new confirmed cases, or 3) both 1) and 2). Probably it is 3). The new deaths are always under-reported on weekends, but the average of the 7 day MA is quite linear with a decrease averaging 3 fewer than the previous day each day of the month. Again, the testing sites are not seeing nearly as many who want to be tested.

NY saw a similar change for May from a much higher base. More open states like FL/TX/GA and states that practically didn't close like SD/AR had such 'flat' charts from the beginning that they peaked low and have declined since then, including after lags as they open even more.

The virus will continue to linger, but second wave less likely.

Seriously, as long as we're willing to keep reporting every single new case and new death it is unlikely that the virus will ever go away. The real question is how do we handle what we have now and in the future, Now even Dr Fauci (and really,his 'predictions' have been all over the place) is saying we may not have a "Second Wave" at all and maybe more of a low level of continuous infections and deaths. Do we just shit everything down until no one dies of anything?

The data all says that at the end of May the epidemic has sputtered into something way more normal in terms of medical and health events. If we set the start at Mar 4, then 13 weeks later we are in a cleanup effort. That is very close to the pattern for all viral epidemics that we have good data for (especially since WWII).

But I do see less reporting of COVID the past few days as it gets crowded out by "peaceful protests" where hardly anyone dies and almost no one is practicing social distancing (although many are wearing masks). I guess maybe some things are more important than COVID-19.

Well, stay safe in all senses and lets try to do better and be better individuals in our joint futures.