April 28. Sad Milestones, New Projections, and Testing and Tracing

April 28.  Lots of Sad Milestones, New Projections, and Testing and Tracing

In the last few days, the World crossed the three million case number, being 3.11 million tonight.  The US crossed the one million case number, at 1.01 million tonight.  So the US has one third of the world’s cases.

World deaths are 217,000, and US deaths are 58,335, or 27%.  Everybody agrees that actually infected people are many times those that needed to be tested.  Sadly, the US deaths above now exceed those of the Vietnam War, of 58,220 US deaths.  Almost 40,000 Americans died in the Korean War.

The IHME has new projections today, which has US total deaths by the end at 72,860.  The 95% upper probability is 122,000.  This has accounting fo rather states relaxing restrictions before meeting Trump’s or the IHME criteria.  The US fit is 9 days past the peak resources, and 13 past peak daily deaths.

The Harvard Road Map for Testing for restarting is 5 million tests a day, and 20 million a day by midsummer.  So far, the White House plans are only 6-7 million tests a month.  The cost involved is $46.5 billion.  This is broken down as follows.  The cost for 180,000 workers to trace and contact is $12 billion.  The cost to isolate contacts in hotels is $4.5 billion.  The cost for 18 months of support is $30 billion.  While it sounds like a lot, the $46.5 billion is only 2% of the $2.5 trillion bailout budget.

Oxford is claiming that they can have a vaccine by this fall.  But Fauci still wants the full year and a half for testing.  One can imagine Trump endorsing and producing the vaccine long before conventional testing is done.  The question is, who would take it then?

This is the map of states starting up now with separate rules in green, yellow ones start up in early May, and red ones stay locked down.

Colorado and Nevada have joined the west coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington in a coordinated group.

We present tables of a few large states which are not relaxing their stay at home programs, and of a few states which are.  We present the projected and present deaths.  The states keeping the restrictions are relatively near their final projections, while the relaxing states are projected to double their present deaths, which are taken as of April 27th.

States Keeping Restrictions:

State Projected Deaths Present Deaths
New York 24,088 21,928
New Jersey 7,051 6,044
Massachusetts 5,633 3,003
Michigan 3,818 3,407
Connecticut 3,366 2,012
Pennsylvania 2,318 1,886
Illinois 2,292 1,983
California 2,035 1,779
Louisiana 2,032 1,740

States Relaxing Restrictions:

State Projected Deaths Present Deaths
Georgia 2,259 995
Florida 1,921 1,088
Texas 1,447 666
Colorado 1,052 706
Kentucky 517 220
Mississippi 380 229
South Carolina 351 177
Wisconsin 331 281

As Sanjay Gupta pointed out, the infection probability is not just stopped by a six foot separation, but it depends on how long one is exposed in an enclosed room.  Hence, hair cutting and gyms are scary to me.  It’s different from passing someone in the market. 

California has now developed more data on how minorities are more affected by the Coronavirus, in given age groups, since Latinos are younger than whites.  In the age group 18 to 49, Latinos make up 64.9% of the deaths, while being 43.5% of the population.  African Americans made up 15.3% of deaths in that age group, while being 6.3% of the population.

While Trump has been blaming China for covering up the initial infection, Trump also cut our C.D.C. Delegation in China from 47 to 14 before the pandemic began.  We really have to stay and contribute to the W.H.O. In order not to make similar mistakes again.

As we speculated from previous small business programs, much of the small business loans went to large businesses.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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