[Paul R.]

Brazil looks like it is making a run at us (daily new cases, daily fatalities). They are not there yet, but their curves look grim.

So far, our (US) trends look ok - it’s certainly not “great” to be losing roughly 1k people per day, but it’s better than over 2k per day. My estimate of 100k fatalities by June 1 looks like it’ll be a bit low. :-(

Current serious/critical US cases appear to still be (on average) growing a bit, but should be well within HCS capacity, esp. given that we (and likely warmer weather also) have squashed the flu. I’m not sure where we are at regarding hospitalizations, but I’d expect a similar trend: Manageable @ present, but many of our valiant HCS workers normally get a bit of a break after flu season. Not this year.

[Presbyterian Reporter]

On Wednesday April 1 I began tracking the number of ‘serious, critical’ cases being reported in the USA.

These are the people who may likely die in the next few days.

If the ‘serious, critical’ number goes up, we will likely see more deaths. On the other hand if the various drugs being tested are effective in treating the virus, the ‘serious, critical’ number should go down.

Here are the numbers:

May 7 Thu 16995
May 8 Fri 16978
May 9 Sat 16816
May 10 Sun 16514
May 11 Mon 16484
May 12 Tue 16473
May 13 Wed 16349
May 14 Thu 16240
May 15 Fri 16139
May 16 Sat 16248
May 17 Sun 16355
May 18 Mon 16868
May 19 Tue 17249
May 20 Wed 17815
I have not posted these numbers for a few days as the number of critical/serious cases remains about the same.

I looked at the worldometer website to see how they collect the serious/critical data “ it represents for the most part the number of patients currently being treated in Intensive Care Unit (ICU), if and when this figure is reported.”

What we need to see is a slowdown in the number of people who are serious/critical and a slowdown in the number of people dying. While the death rate slowed this past week, the number of people who are serious/critical remains at the high end of the range.

I also truncated the data to keep this posting shorter. Earlier numbers are available in DoughtyOne’s tables.

[Zhang Fei]

[My estimate of 100k fatalities by June 1 looks like it’ll be a bit low. :-(]

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Don’t feel too bad. My optimistic estimate of 150K fatalities by Election Day, from a month ago, now looks way low. Now I’m looking at 200K fatalities, best case.

[Zhang Fei]

[Manageable @ present, but many of our valiant HCS workers normally get a bit of a break after flu season. Not this year.]

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If this follows the trajectory of flu seasons, we’re gonna get it big time in the fall. March and April are usually off-months for the flu, ramping up in November and tapering off in February. But March and April were precisely when we got peak death numbers from the coronavirus.