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We have new mortality data for the US. What it shows is very interesting.
To start with, here's the raw data. Note the little bump in the last week with reported data (latest week is imputed from seasonality and COVID death trends). That's a very low-reliability estimate from very limited early reports.... but still interesting.
The bump doesn't arise from one or two states. It's present across tons of states. Which is why even though it's from VERY limited and incomplete, I'm inclined to think it at least suggests deaths did not decline in that week. That's consistent with no decline in prior week too.
How does this look in historic comparison?
Deaths are well above normal levels and staying elevated.
Deaths are well above normal levels and staying elevated.
The true pandemic death toll today is probably 200,000 or more. Yikes.
To make matters worse, it looks like we are entering a second wave of transmission, perhaps driven by everybody sitting in cool indoor environments with AC.
GET OUTSIDE PEOPLE.
GET OUTSIDE PEOPLE.
Here's the infection and R estimate data. Nationwide R value (i.e. new infections divided by estimated active infections) has EXPLODED since June 5-10. Based on case count data, it's up to 1.2 again.
One of the largest increases has come in Minnesota.
Y'all, get outside... but maybe not in, like, huge gatherings of shouting people.
Y'all, get outside... but maybe not in, like, huge gatherings of shouting people.
What's so disappointing about this is that Minnesota's case counts were plummeting. R was very low. They were THIS CLOSE to ending their epidemic.
Now they're going for a second wave.
Now they're going for a second wave.
I'm a bit irritated at the line we're seeing about the rise in R being driven by just this state or that state. Here's a selection of states. R is rising in MANY places!
We are seeing rises in places where people are probably cooped up in AC a lot now (Florida, Arizona), but also places where they really aren't, like Washington and Michigan.
And while I highlighted Minnesota due to the possibility of protests spreading COVID-19.... I don't actually see any obvious-nationwide correlated between media-reported major protest states and change in R.
Seems likely that what's actually happening is as people are returning to normal in a variety of ways and as people spend more time indoors, the highly-random spread of COVID via isolated-but-dangerous superspreading events is resuming.
I've seen this point raised: treatment may be improving, and also new cases are skewing younger. In both cases, this would death-based epidemic measures would understate infections, and that rising R would have a smaller impact on mortality. https://twitter.com/Biomaven/status/1274917987267555328
However, I am VERY skeptical of this claim. I don't really buy that new infections are actually younger. I just think we are testing a larger share of new infections. Here's a guess at what share of new infections are being caught.
I've seen a lot of people saying that New York hasn't had any increase in infections recently. That... doesn't seem entirely correct?
Obviously nowhere close to the scale of New York's last wave, but the R value implied by official cases has risen from 0.6 around June 10 to almost 0.8 today. Could totally be random noise; we'll see! But I would advise against too much triumphalism.
Here's the geographic distribution of excess deaths, shown both by peak and cumulative through May (no accounting for revisions has been made in this data). Only a few states have escaped significant excess deaths, and mostly that's because their data is unreliable.
