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Remember three weeks ago when you thought our pandemic projection model that predicted 580 deaths by April 4th seemed impossible or insane?
That same model originally predicted 2.1 million deaths in the USA by July 4th if nothing was done to achieve social distancing and aggressive isolation. I published that model at a time when President Trump was still in the denial stage, and when there were barely in deaths in the USA. At that time, most people couldn’t fathom even 500 deaths happening in the USA.
Fortunately, some governors and mayors came to their senses and measures were put in place over the last two weeks to achieve strong social distancing — with now almost 30% of the US population under lockdown — which means the catastrophic worst case scenario has been avoided.
However, we’re still in a scenario where probably tens of thousands of deaths in the USA cannot be avoided, and we’ll be lucky to get out of this with fewer than 250,000 fatalities in the USA. At the same time, the economic impacts of the shutdown, of course, will be devastating to the economy in the short term.
To understand why we’re still on track for a flood of fatalities in the weeks ahead, compare my original pandemic projections with the actual number of deaths from the coronavirus that have been recorded. The following chart also shows you the future dates and projections from my original projection model:
USA deaths from coronavirus – original projections released early March, 2020 – since revised with stronger social distancing factors
Date | Projected Deaths | Actual Deaths |
6-Mar | 13 | 17 |
7-Mar | 15 | 19 |
8-Mar | 18 | 22 |
9-Mar | 22 | 23 |
10-Mar | 26 | 30 |
11-Mar | 30 | 32 |
12-Mar | 35 | 41 |
13-Mar | 40 | 50 |
14-Mar | 47 | 54 |
15-Mar | 54 | 60 |
16-Mar | 62 | 79 |
17-Mar | 71 | 100 |
18-Mar | 81 | 143 |
19-Mar | 92 | 179 |
20-Mar | 104 | 264 |
21-Mar | 118 | 344 |
22-Mar | 134 | 388 (so far) |
23-Mar | 151 | |
24-Mar | 170 | |
25-Mar | 191 | |
26-Mar | 215 | |
27-Mar | 241 | |
28-Mar | 270 | |
29-Mar | 303 | |
30-Mar | 338 | |
31-Mar | 378 | |
1-Apr | 421 | |
2-Apr | 469 | |
3-Apr | 521 | |
4-Apr | 580 | |
5-Apr | 644 | |
6-Apr | 714 | |
7-Apr | 791 | |
8-Apr | 877 | |
9-Apr | 970 | |
10-Apr | 1073 | |
11-Apr | 1186 | |
12-Apr | 1310 | |
13-Apr | 1446 | |
14-Apr | 1595 | |
15-Apr | 1758 | |
16-Apr | 1938 | |
17-Apr | 2134 | |
18-Apr | 2349 | |
19-Apr | 2585 | |
20-Apr | 2844 | |
21-Apr | 3127 | |
22-Apr | 3436 | |
23-Apr | 3775 | |
24-Apr | 4147 | |
25-Apr | 4553 | |
26-Apr | 4997 | |
27-Apr | 5483 | |
28-Apr | 6015 | |
29-Apr | 6597 | |
30-Apr | 7233 |
It’s now rather obvious that we will have far more than 7,233 deaths by April 30th. Then again, the lockdowns and isolation orders will most definitely flatten the curve quite dramatically in another 3-5 weeks, so I do expect real fatalities to diverge from this model quite dramatically toward the end of April.
And that’s the good news in all this. The lockdowns break the cycle of exponential spread. Lockdowns work because the Wuhan coronavirus spreads from person to person, obviously. So stopping the spread requires people to stop coming into social contact for a period of time.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is now saying we should expect a 10 – 12 week lockdown situation across America, after which the number of new infections should plummet dramatically. But Gov. Cuomo is now warning the lockdowns may last up to nine months.
If you thought New Yorkers were out of their minds right now, imagine nine months in lockdown… not a pretty picture.
So we’re looking at, earliest, mid-June before America starts to get back on its feet again. The question is whether America can make it to June under lockdown status without people losing their minds over the shortages of food and nationwide “house arrest.” Sadly, I don’t have an answer to that question at this time. We’ll know a lot more by the end of March. But I will share something with you: Being able to walk my ranch with goats and donkeys sure seems like an amazing luxury right now, even though I have been mocked for living in the country and caring for animals in years past. (Funny how everything changes overnight, right?)
There’s one other thing I do know for sure: I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near a large city right now, and especially not Los Angeles, as LA County just yesterday announced a surrender to the virus, telling doctors to stop testing for infections because the battle was already lost and the epidemic was far beyond containment there.
Seriously, it’s starting to turn into a Kurt Russell action movie, “Escape from New York / L.A.”
Brighteon.com/b87647e2-e2e6-40d4-b4a6-d987d7583d7b
Read more at Pandemic.news if you want to stay alive and survive all this.
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