Even as the number of cases goes up, deaths (the more important number) keeps coming down.
https://i.imgur.com/LMVNbBD.png
We keep hearing about how this trend will reverse soon, ("two weeks from now"), but that hasn't happened yet.
It seems pretty clear now that even our low estimates of fatality were too high and that many people had Covid-19 in March/April/May and were never tested/counted.
It happened a week ago. It's easier to see when you look at a moving average.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-daily-deaths-trajec...
But the headline is clearly that deaths have fallen ~70% even as total (reported) cases has continued to grow exponentially.
The other big issue of course is lag. If you look at daily positive tests, current hospitalizations and newly reported deaths in one graph the lag becomes more visible.
Here I e.g. just used a log y axis to show all three in one plot: https://anarazel.de/t/2020-07-13/all_in_one.png
which imo makes that more visible.
3 weeks from today we will have about 2200 deaths per day, based on the 7 day moving average.
The case fatality rate for the virus is going down due to increased testing (identifying more cases) and better treatment (Remdesivir, dexamethasone, and better medical knowledge in general).
So it won’t be as bad as a naive extrapolation might make things look. Still bad though.
All else being equal, if the case count triples, the death count is going to triple. Now in this case there are two things that aren't equal. #1 is that the cases are more biased towards younger people, and #2 is that positivity has increased. I expect that these two factors will roughly cancel each other out and the death count will be about 2200. Would you care to place a wager on the over/under at 1600?
One of the more interesting things I've been reading is that we shouldn't think about this as a total binary. There are reports that survivors exhibit have long-term effects, such as neurological issues [1] and lung damage.
So yes, it's good that fewer people are dying! But that doesn't mean everything is simply great now.
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200622-the-long-term-ef...
Your graph shows an increase over the last week. A rolling average shows that more clearly:
https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/us-daily-deaths
If you look at the currently worse off regions / states you can see the rise in deaths more clearly. E.g. in the south and west there's a pretty clearly recognizable rise:
https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/regional-deaths
Here's a link to per-region stats: https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/all-metrics-per-state and some example states with pretty clear trends:
AZ: https://public.tableau.com/shared/6GDK353C7?:display_count=y...
CA: https://public.tableau.com/shared/GKK6SFGNR?:display_count=y...
FL: https://public.tableau.com/shared/P2SSPXC3Y?:display_count=y...
TX: https://public.tableau.com/shared/M8KY224BR?:display_count=y...
> deaths (the more important number) keeps coming down.
Deaths are important, obviously, but they are also a severely lagging indicator.
Edit: Formatting
Is it though?
> For every one person who dies:
> 19 more require hospitalization.
> 18 of those will have permanent heart damage for the rest of their lives.
> 10 will have permanent lung damage.
> 3 will have strokes.
> 2 will have neurological damage that leads to chronic weakness and loss of coordination.
> 2 will have neurological damage that leads to loss of cognitive function.
* https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-disease-with-1-mortality-shu...
We’re also 1/3 of the way to WWII deaths in the US.
Adding critical context: Nearly half of americans are obese and/or have heart disease, and ~650,000 are killed by it each year.
How much lower would all those numbers be if americans simply exercised and ate healthy on a regular basis?
Assume 1% fatality rate for infections (it’s actually lower), you’re saying somewhere 19% to 60% (depending on overlap of those categories) have permanent damage?
That’s clearly not what we’re seeing.
Article links to sources. Interpret as you will.
Just a counter-'claim' against the GP that all we have to worry about is the fatality rate.
As hospitals fill up, even with a low mortality rate, it means all sorts of other procedures are delayed or cancelled.
So for every death there are 99 other cases. There is no way that 19 of those have permanent disabilities. That would means several million Americans are seriously disabled by the virus.
We know that approximately 10-20% of all cases are hospitalized. So that 19% is actually 2-4% (19% of 10-20%).
It hasn't?
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/coronavirus-deaths-tick-up-i...
You're mixing those states together with New York, for which cases and deaths are strongly positively correlated:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/new-york-coronav...
Check out the SF data: comparing "All California" to Bay Area shows that we're rising in cases and deaths in california as a whole, but flat/declining in northern california.
This phenomenon, I believe, is happening all over the place.
Deaths are down if you look at the US as a whole.
However, if you look at the state level its not always the same picture.
Florida's death toll is up from a 7-day rolling average of 51 in April (the peak of its first wave) to 71 as of yesterday.
Having a wide and healthy discussion on this site does not require that we entertain people advocating mass death.
The constant refrain that this isn’t a big deal seems belied somewhat by the five hundred thousand dead people.
It makes no sense to say that deaths have plummeted in NY, as cases have too, and therefore Arizona or Florida doesn't have to worry about deaths increasing as cases skyrocket.
Thanks doctor.
Maybe next you can educate us on why the data you linked literally contradicts everything you said. The trend in deaths is increasing.