The United States has now surpassed 28 million COVID-19 cases. According to Johns Hopkins University, there have been 28,065,688 COVID-19 cases resulting in 497,374 deaths. This represents a mortality rate of 1.8%.
Consider what I wrote on January 30th when the U.S. surpassed 26 million cases:
It took 64 days for the number of COVID-19 cases to double from 13 million to 26 million. Is this a good sign?
In most ways it isn't when you consider that it took 281 days to reach 13 million. The disease is spreading far more rapidly now that it did last spring or summer.
On the other hand, it took 53 days for the number of cases to double from 9 million to 18 million. Another 53 days to double from 10 million to 20 million. It took 55 days to double from 11 to 22 million while taking 58 days to double from 12 million to 24 million. We recorded our 14 millionth case on December 3, 2020. If we hit the 28 million mark after February 5th then there's some progress.
Well, we have indeed made progress given that it took until February 20th to hit 28 million cases - more than two weeks beyond the threshold. Yes, 14 million new COVID-19 cases in 79 days is still too much as is 2 million new cases in the past three weeks, but baby steps. The question will this step forward be followed by two steps back.
With this in mind, let us also consider something else I wrote:
But how many deaths will have occurred during this period? That same day we recorded our 14 millionth COVID-19 case, we also saw the death toll climb above 275,000. Whenever we hit 28 million cases we will likely be somewhere between 450,000 and 475,000 deaths.
We are at almost 500,000 deaths and we shall likely reach this ignominious figure by tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment