Crisis.
This comes from Trevor Bedford, who was one of the first scientists in the country back in February to claim via statistical analysis that “invisible” community spread of coronavirus had already begun in the U.S. Within a few weeks, the spread was no longer invisible. His point today is straightforward. It takes about three weeks for a severe case of COVID to proceed from the point of infection to death; thus, based on the case fatality rate so far, we can guesstimate how many deaths there’ll be on a given date based on how many new cases there are on a given date three weeks earlier. And there’s really nothing we can do to avert those deaths. We can save some lives at the margins via drugs like dexamethasone but the crop of positive tests today will produce a roughly proportional crop of deaths three weeks from now. To drive down the death toll the day after that, we have to drive down the number of infections tomorrow. There’s no other way. There is a lag between when a case is diagnosed and when the individual may succumb to their disease and there is a further lag between date of death and when the death is reported.2/8 Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) November 11,2020 This can be seen across states where the solid lines show reported cases by date of report and dashed lines show reported deaths lagged by 22 days. You can see some detailed correspondences, especially in states experiencing the summer surge like Florida, Arizona and Texas.4/8 pic.twitter.com/iX1m4faYzO — Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) November 11,2020 Looking backwards, this lag-adjusted CFR means that 991 deaths in the US today (with 7-day smoothing) should be compared against 57,206 cases reported Oct 19 (with 7-day smoothing). In this case,991/57206 = 1.7% is consistent with this overall lag-adjusted CFR.6/8 — Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) November 11,2020 I expect the US to be reporting over 2000 deaths per day in 3 weeks time. Importantly, this doesn’t assume any further increases in circulation and is essentially « baked into » currently reported cases and represents conditions that take time to resolve and to be reported.8/8 — Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) November 11,2020 Baked in. We’ve topped 2,000 daily deaths before, but that was at the peak of the first wave this spring. There’s no reason to think we’re at the peak of the second wave now. We’re still climbing the epidemiological curve. We may reach a daily death toll — daily — on the order of 9/11 sometime in December. And as the number of daily cases rises, the number of people needing hospital care will rise too. Once hospitals are maxed out, the case fatality rate will also rise because some people who could have been saved if they had dedicated hospital care won’t be able to get that care. There’s no telling where this goes. From first case reported in US, took 96 days to reach 1 million. Then1 to 2 million-44 days2 to 3 million-27 days 3 to 4 million-15 days4 to 5 million-17 days5 to 6 million-22 days6 to 7 million-25 days7 to 8 million-21 days8 to 9 million-14 days9 to 10 million-10 days — Dr. Tom Frieden (@DrTomFrieden) November 12,2020 In case you still think there’s hope for this country, enjoy this Washington Post piece that drills down on why cases are exploding right now. It’s not because front-line workers like supermarket cashiers are forced by the vagaries of their jobs to risk spreading infection. It’s because many Americans simply refuse to sacrifice a particular form of… fun.
