The Coronavirus Death Rate Revisited #2

I have some seemingly Good News.  It’s a small study, but it might make you feel better.

I’ve been diligently collecting data from these two websites.  I don’t need much, just some total case and death figures:

• worldometers.info/coronavirus/
• cdc.gov

On April 7^th, 2020, I published my first article entitled “The True Coronavirus Death Rate – A Horrifying Prospect”.  I had concluded, from the data I had been observing, that the Coronavirus Death Rate would end around 20%.

This is a link to the first report on April 7th:

https://protocriteria.com/index.php/2020/04/08/true-coronavirus-death-rate-a-horrifying-prospect/

About a week later, I realized the above two websites were treating the Coronavirus more like Cancer than a virus – they were not closing any cases, which made it look like a person contracts the virus and never gets better.  Well, to be fair, the CDC hasn’t been publishing the number of closed cases anyway, and Worldometers.info has been using alternative sources.  Some U.S. States are publishing closed case numbers and some are not.  This means the Closed Case number is always LOWER than what it really is.  If the closed case number is low, the death rate is automatically higher.  So I figured out a way to calculate a closed case number and I published a revision.

This is a link to the second report on April 13^th explaining what I did:

https://protocriteria.com/index.php/2020/04/13/coronavirus-death-rate-revisited/

At the end of this particular article I made a prediction, I said,

“IF I’m right about the 14 day Average Case time and the 15% CFR holds, THEN in 14 Days (04/27/2020), the Total Number of Deaths should equal about 86,403.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope it’s lower, much lower.”

Well, I would now like to revise my prediction.

I’ll let the numbers speak for themselves.  This is all data straight from the CDC.

	COVID19	COVID19	COVID19	COVID19	Estimated	Estimated	Estimated
Date	New Cases	Total Cases	New Deaths	Total Deaths	Total Active	Total Closed	CFR
4/1/2020	22,562	186,101	743	3,603	179,063	7,038	0.5119352
4/2/2020	27,043	213,144	910	4,513	202,702	10,442	0.4321969
4/3/2020	26,135	239,279	930	5,443	224,060	15,219	0.3576450
4/4/2020	37,926	277,205	1,150	6,593	258,458	18,747	0.3516829
4/5/2020	27,621	304,826	1,023	7,616	280,243	24,583	0.3098076
4/6/2020	26,065	330,891	1,294	8,910	297,487	33,404	0.2667345
4/7/2020	43,438	374,329	3,154	12,064	330,146	44,183	0.2730462
4/8/2020	20,682	395,011	690	12,754	340,558	54,453	0.2342203
4/9/2020	32,449	427,460	1,942	14,696	359,020	68,440	0.2147282
4/10/2020	31,705	459,165	1,874	16,570	373,809	85,356	0.1941281
4/11/2020	33,251	492,416	1,989	18,559	389,095	103,321	0.1796247
4/12/2020	33,288	525,704	1,927	20,486	403,051	122,653	0.1670240
4/13/2020	29,145	554,849	1,456	21,942	413,945	140,904	0.1557230
4/14/2020	24,156	579,005	310	22,252	415,466	163,539	0.1360654
4/15/2020	26,385	605,390	2,330	24,582	419,289	186,101	0.1320896
4/16/2020	26,830	632,220	2,348	26,930	419,076	213,144	0.1263465
4/17/2020	28,210	660,430	1,893	28,823	421,151	239,279	0.1204577
4/18/2020	29,002	689,432	2,394	31,217	412,227	277,205	0.1126134
4/19/2020	29,646	719,078	1,759	32,976	414,252	304,826	0.1081797
4/20/2020	26,265	745,343	1,881	34,857	414,452	330,891	0.1053428
4/21/2020	27,354	772,697	1,550	36,407	398,368	374,329	0.0972594
4/22/2020	25,905	798,602	2,306	38,713	403,591	395,011	0.0980049

 

On the 15^th or the 16^th, just as the New Closed Cases (not shown) was about to surpass the New Cases, the CDC modified their data.  They started to publish the following disclaimer:

This page is updated daily based on data confirmed at 4:00pm ET the day before. Numbers reported on Saturdays and Sundays are preliminary and not yet confirmed by state and territorial health departments. These numbers will be modified when numbers are updated on Mondays.

CDC does not know the exact number of COVID-19 illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths for a variety of reasons. COVID-19 can cause mild illness, symptoms might not appear immediately, there are delays in reporting and testing, not everyone who is infected gets tested or seeks medical care, and there may be differences in how states and territories confirm numbers in their jurisdictions.

They also started to include, in their numbers, “probable” cases and “probable” deaths.

Here’s the reason they gave for doing so;

“As of April 14, 2020, CDC case counts and death counts include both confirmed and probable cases and deaths. This change was made to reflect an interim COVID-19 position statementpdf iconexternal icon issued by the Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists on April 5, 2020. The position statement included a case definition and made COVID-19 a nationally notifiable disease.

 A confirmed case or death is defined by meeting confirmatory laboratory evidence for COVID-19. A probable case or death is defined by i) meeting clinical criteria AND epidemiologic evidence with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID-19; or ii) meeting presumptive laboratory evidence AND either clinical criteria OR epidemiologic evidence; or iii) meeting vital records criteria with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID19.”

Well, I want to stay as official as possible, so I only accept “confirmed” cases and “confirmed” deaths.  I have been excluding these “probable” numbers from my study.

This is why Their Total Case Number = 802,583 and mine = 798,602, and their Total Deaths = 44,575 and mine = 38,713.

Their Total cases include 3,981 probable cases and their total deaths include 5,862 probable deaths.  As long as they let me separate the “probable” from the “confirmed”, I will.

Anyway, as you can see, the CFR has fallen drastically.  It’s no longer hovering around 30% or 15%, it’s dropped all the way down to 9%.  I think that’s Good News.

Even more good news is the possibility that the CFR is even lower than that.  If there are a lot more asymptomatic cases out there than we previously believed, that means both the total number of cases and closed cases would go up, and the CFR would be even lower.

I can now say with confidence, that there’s no way the Total Number of Deaths is going to reach 86,403 by April 27.