Unsanitized: Why Deaths May Not Spike Despite Rising Coronavirus Cases [View all]

[TexasTowelie]

The weekend produced the same out-of-control case counts in the South and Southwest. The case increases cannot be explained by increased testing alone; on Friday one-quarter of Arizona tests were found positive, up from around 8 percent on Memorial Day, when the rise began. Florida had a record single-day case count on Friday, and about a quarter of Alabama’s total cases have come in the last week. Nationwide, on Saturday the U.S. registered the highest case numbers since May 1.

Take a look at the death counts, however, which have definitively slowed. Sunday we saw only 297 deaths, very low even when accounting for a slow reporting day. The seven-day rolling average is under 600 and headed down in a fairly linear fashion.

All the caveats about how positive tests are incomplete, how deaths are probably incomplete, etc., apply. But the trends are clear enough: case counts are rising, rapidly in some spots, and deaths are dropping. Deaths aren’t even rising all that much in states where cases are flying.

Now, this is perfectly consistent. Deaths are a lagging indicator: you catch the coronavirus, you get sick, for some that sickness progressively worsens, and then you die. But cases started to rise in these states as much as four weeks ago. The lag should have caught up to the extent that we’d at least see some rise in deaths. Yet we have not. And though I’m uncomfortable making any kind of prediction when it comes to this virus, falling deaths could or even should continue even as cases go up. Here’s why.

Read more: https://prospect.org/coronavirus/unsanitized-deaths-may-not-spike-despite-rising-cases/
(American Prospect)