10 April, 2021

The Numbers Do Indicate Reason for Concern

“Impending doom” seems excessive. “Scared” might be reasonable. Let’s take a look at the numbers. These are all 7-day rolling average:

  Worldwide United States Indiana
Cases - Current 589.598 60,122 1,037
Cases – Recent Min 358,964
Feb. 21
47,418
Mar. 14
745
Mar. 4
Cases – Recent Peak 761,164
Jan. 22
227,593
Jan. 8
5,379
Jan. 10

These are all pretty significant increases. Walensky is also correct that often when things start going up, we get an explosion. There is plenty of reason here to be concerned, possibly even frightened.

However, the numbers for fatalities are generally more promising:

  Worldwide United States Indiana
Deaths - Current 10,357 733* 9
Deaths – Recent Min 8,409
Mar. 16
733
Apr. 6
7
Apr. 5
Deaths – Recent Max 16,255
Jan. 24
3,061
Feb. 5
88
Jan. 2

*Ended with April 6 data. April 7 had 2500 fatalities, which is almost certainly a correction. And it is skewing the current results.

Worlwide fatalities are up, by a decent margin. However, in the U.S. and locally here in Indiana, we’re basically at our recent lows.

I’ve been fooled by the numbers before. I am very concerned by the rising case counts, and confused by them as well. With rising vaccination rates, and the huge numbers of people who have already had the disease, case counts shouldn’t be rising. As long as vaccinations keep going up and fatalities stay down, I’m not scared yet.

There are reasons to be hopeful this is just a short-lived bubble. But history is against that, sadly.

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