COVID Milestone: ~1 million US deaths in 800 days
NY Times reported on May 19th that the US had officially recorded one million deaths from COVID. This is slightly different than the 993,000 reported on the World Health Organization data source. That’s almost 800 days since the 100 death recorded.
Just goes to show how this pandemic had a long term impact. All those people who said it would be 2 years before we got back to normal were generally on point.
Current data shows approximately 100,000 average daily new cases and approximately 328 average daily deaths (that’s about 1 fatality per million of population per day — still about double the rate of a seasonal flu).
Monthly view of the US:
The worst months for deaths since inception were Dec 2020 and Jan — Feb 2021 (pre vaccination) about 244,000 deaths. The same three months starting Dec 2021 (generally post vaccination availability) recorded ~ 170,000 deaths. Still a lot of people.
Omicron recorded over 20 million cases in January 2022 (and 64,000 deaths); so far in May we are at 1.6 million cases (and 6,000 deaths).
US Trend — Year to Date:
Nevertheless we have truly peaked. Omicron generated the highest peak — but, comined with vaccination, must have pushed us close to herd immunity:
Lifetime average daily trend for the US:
Blue line is the average daily cases; red line is average daily fatalities. Average daily cases in January 2022 were more than 3 times those of January 2021 (the prior peak)
Lets take a look where cases and fatalities are highest. Seems there are a few hot spots remaining across the US.
Daily Fatalities: Kansas; Kentucky; New Mexico and Alaska lead the average fatality data:
Most other states are well under 1 fatality per million per day.
New cases: Rhode Island; Connecticut and Hawaii lead the way.
Ideas for blogs
Now that this wave seems to be on the way out — its making me think of some ideas for future posts:
- Did we create too much stimulus? A key question as we are unquestionably heading into a bear market and possible recession
- How did the market react along this two year journey?
- How did the orginal predictions of fatalities play out?
- How many times did we declare victory?
- How many years of toilet paper inventory do we collectively hold today?!
What questions does the pandemic play out for you as you look over the past 2 years?
What decisions would you change if we had to relive this again? What advice would you leave for your children? Did you emerge from the pandemic with a new skill? Did you emerge fitter (or fatter)?
These are my thoughts and questions as to how we wrap up the pandemic — and hopefully wrap up this blog.
Originally published at http://jf-insights.com on May 21, 2022.
