Biden team won't have formal power to manage COVID until January 20

71 days

Between now and then, we may see additional 100,00 deaths from COVID

Its a horribly high number

Why do I say that? Heres the math

Right now, 1000 people dying every day

That number will rise

Thread

The 1,000 deaths represents infections that happened 4-5 weeks ago

So how many infections happened 4-5 weeks ago?

On October 7, we had about 45,000 cases with 5% positivity rate

Yesterday, we had 110,000 cases with 10% positive rate

These are 7-d moving averages

2/6

So number of identified infections 2.5X

And % positive doubled.....meaning we are missing MANY more cases today than on Oct 7

We're missing so many cases today b/c of our wholly inadequate testing

So I suspect true number of infections at least 3-5X what it was on Oct 7

3/4

If we are conservative and assume infections 3X that of Oct 7

And if Oct 7 infections give us 1,000 deaths today

Simple math says that we are likely to have 3,000 deaths a day in 4 to 5 weeks (mid-December)

Will that happen?

I suspect we might do a bit better

4/6

Why?

Continued improvements in treatment will help -- but will only make a modest difference

So we could hit the worst day of the pandemic when we lost nearly 2500 Americans

And with 71 days to inauguration, we could easily average 1500 deaths daily between now and then

5/6

What do we do?

Tell you Congressperson to get money to states for more testing

Tell you governor to advocate masks, expand testing, limit indoor gatherings

And please be careful with get togethers

We will have safe, effective vaccines in 2021

Keep people safe until then

Fin