Some early thoughts on the tragic number of deaths we& #39;ve seen in Louisiana today. As of today& #39;s update, 1,013 Louisianians have lost their lives due to the #coronavirus.

Here& #39;s an early write-up, but I& #39;m going to go through a couple things in this thread https://www.nola.com/news/coronavirus/article_00af4714-7e6c-11ea-96f7-6bf8cceea999.html">https://www.nola.com/news/coro...

First, the increase in deaths reported on Tuesday was the largest by far since the start of the outbreak. An additional 129 people have now been confirmed to have lost their lives due to the virus. The highest toll reported on a previous day was 70.

You& #39;ll note I keep stressing "reported." That& #39;s important. We know that the official LDH count lags the actual dates of death and Gov. Edwards explicitly said in a press release that not all the deaths counted today occurred in the past 24 hours.

Since the start of the outbreak there& #39;s been a particular fall-off in reporting on weekends. With this past weekend including both Good Friday and Easter, it seems likely that the weekend effect was exacerbated somewhat, leading to a bigger backlog that is only just being counted

However, even if you account for that by averaging out some of the past few days, there& #39;s still a rise in the count of deaths Louisiana saw today.

So what does that mean, given the signs that things were starting to level off in Louisiana?

It& #39;s too early to tell exactly. It& #39;s always worth waiting to watch for trends rather than putting too much weight on one day& #39;s numbers.

But today& #39;s numbers are not unexpected.