Some Bad News About The CDC, Misleading Media Coverage, and Further Good News About the Covid-19 Pandemic

Two weeks ago, I reported the latest CDC numbers on the death rates from Covid-19 as of June 6th. I revisited the site and found that the numbers have changed for that week. There is a lag in the reporting. Rather than not publish their data, the CDC publishes incomplete data and corrects the numbers as new data comes in. So here are the revised numbers and my calculated risks for covid-19 deaths. A couple of people thought my logic was faulty. I divided the number of deaths in each age group into the number of people in the country. My rationale was that we tend to mingle amongst each other so that a thirty-year-old can infect a seventy-two-year-old. Some thought I should divide the number of deaths in each age group into only the number of people in that age group. I have redone the calculations based on the new data and included the requested risk calculation. Since the CDC has added more deaths, the risk factors have gone up. I still feel that the numbers are encouraging.

From the graph below, you can see that the number of tests (the blue bars in the chart) undertaken in the United States is increasing. The last bar is low due to the lag in reporting I discussed above. The percent of positive cases had been going down until recently. The small rise at the end ( the black line in the graph) is due to more healthy people getting the virus, who can fight it off and survive. I can say this with confidence, because the death rate continues to fall, despite more cases.

The number of people getting infected going up seems terrible, but not in the context of ending an epidemic. Epidemiologists know that all outbreaks end after the contagion spreads throughout the population. Those exposed will either already have natural immunity, acquired immunity, or perish. Once the entire community is exposed this way, the epidemic will end because there is no longer enough susceptible individuals. This is what herd immunity is. It is critical to avoiding continuing disaster. More testing, higher survival rates, and herd immunity are what we want. Would it be better if Covid-19 never happened? Of course, it would, but I hope you find comfort in the fact that the epidemic is going away. In the process, we have a more resilient population.