IHME Projects Almost 400,000 US Deaths by February 1
The October 9 IHME U. Of Washington Coronavirus projections now extend another month to February 1. Current US masking is now taken as 69%, following Facebook, a large jump from the previous 49%. Also, the effect of masking has been increased as well. So the previous predictions of near 400,000 deaths by January 1 have now been extended to February 1. Also, we now see that the deaths per day peak around mid-January and then decrease to February 1.
Total deaths with the Current Projection on February 1 is 394,693. With 95% masking starting now, this is reduced to 315,827, saving 78,866 lives. The present US deaths are at 212,348, so there will be 182,345 more by February 1. The number of saved lives by full masking, 78,866, is 43% of the lives to be lost by February 1.
For comparison with previous IHME estimates for January 1, the new estimate is reduced to 323,338 deaths, from 363,000 last week. Now, 46,211 lives will be saved by 95% masking to January 1, reduced from 85,000 from last week’s projection.
There are now 688 deaths per day. On February 1 there are projected to be 2,233 deaths per day. With 95% masking, this will be 1,403, saving 830 lives a day, or 37%. The peak of deaths per day will occur on January 18, at 2,352.
In a graph, the IHME cites that 24% of estimated infections per day are detected, lead to a multiplicative factor of 4.2 to get infections from confirmed cases per day. This can also be calculated from the estimated infections of 114,507 per day now, divided by about an average of 40,000 confirmed cases per day. This gives a multiplicative factor of 2.9.
We include the IHME map of the percentage of residents who have been infected by state. This is not the same as the percent of those who are currently infectious, which I estimate in the next article.
The next map is the projection of the percentage who will have been infected by February 1.
We also show the percent currently masking by state:
