WUHAN VIRUS DAILY UPDATE FOR MAY 1
TESTING UP - DEATHS DOWN - CURVES DOWN. Despite efforts to inflate death rates as described yesterday both rates of growth (rog) and absolute numbers of deaths continue to decline. Also, as testing increases, we got results from 319,492 tests today, the positive test rates are declining. Today's were 10.82% - down from a two-week average of 14.89%. As that numbers approaches 5% we can feel more confident that our testing capacity is adequately capturing the real rate of new incidents. For most of the states this is already the case.
Sadly we're about to start a new weekend and can expect to see numbers drop off and won't get a good sense until we can average tomorrow through Tuesday just what's going on. Expectation is that rogs will be lower across all categories and most places will be even lower in absolute numbers for deaths - even as states start to reopen. Main concern now is to watch out for short term curves to pop up in high density population centers that have not been hit significantly yet.
Our new total for incidents is 1,095,681 (+34,580 - a larger number strictly in line with more testing which means we're simply catching more of them), an increase of 3.26% over the previous day (+0.55% from yesterday). Deaths have totaled 59,059 (+1,793) which is an increase of 3.13% (-0.56%) over the previous day. Since the peak in Mar 19, rates of growth for incidents has fallen by 48.38% and for deaths has fallen by 39.73%.
In official reporting news, the CDC has updated their Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) report effective April 30, 2020. This report details how many people have died across the country (and also at a state by state level) for ALL causes and provides break outs for Wuhan-virus, Pneumonia, Wuhan-Pneumonia co-morbidities, and Influenza for the year to date as compared to what numbers we would expect to see any other year before adjusted for population changes. Thus far,the nation as a whole is at 97% of expected deaths year to date. That means that there have actually been 3% fewer deaths than the CDC expected over all. Out of 713,386 total deaths for all causes, 34,521 have Wuhan-virus co-morbidities. There were 62,725 deaths from Pneumonia and fully half of the Wuhan-virus deaths had a Pneumonia co-morbidity. Influenza deaths were only 5,821. Out of 50 states, there are only 12 who have hit 100% or higher of expected deaths. Of those, only two have hit above 106%, that's New York @ 122% and New Jersey @ 131%. What this means is that, outside of NY & NJ, the Wuhan-virus has had no statistically significant impact. NONE.
Gonna put a stick in the mud here and make a projection. May will be a considerably mild month in terms of Wuhan-virus deaths compared to April. ROGs for incidents and deaths were 14% and 25% respectively and have fallen down to low single digits of 3.26% and 3.13%. With the increase of testing we anticipate new incident rogs to possibly climb a bit higher while death rogs should continue a slow but clear decline.
Spring is here, Summer is coming, the Wuhan-virus will be a medical memory soon but an econmic disaster for a while longer.