The death toll is edging up in several states, possibly ending months of declining national death totals.
The U.S.’s daily number of deaths from the coronavirus has risen recently in some of the nation’s most populous states, signaling a possible end to months of declining death totals nationally.
In Texas, officials announced 119 deaths on Wednesday, surpassing a daily record for deaths in the pandemic that the state had set only a day earlier. In Arizona, more than 200 deaths have been announced already this week, and the daily virus death toll in the state reached higher than ever. Mississippi, Florida and Tennessee also set single-day death records this week.
The seven-day death average in the United States reached 608 on Thursday, up from 471 earlier in July, but still a fraction of the more than 2,200 deaths the country averaged each day in mid-April, when the situation in the Northeast was at its worst.
Health experts cautioned that it was too early to predict a continuing trend from only a few days of data. But the rising pace of deaths in the Sunbelt followed weeks of mounting cases in the region and suggested an end to the country’s nearly three-month period of declines in daily counts of virus deaths.
It is, and you can see that graphically, also from the Times:
The seven-day average Deaths line is as high as it was in mid-June and has sharply risen whereas in mid-June it was on a sustained decline.
One notices also the repeating pattern of periodicity of the daily bars. The cumulative total number of Deaths, and of Cases, are real; the seven-day average is more real than the daily numbers but still not entirely real. Every four or five days the daily numbers drop. After a couple or three days they spike up. Those numbers, and their graphical depiction are not real. The periodicity that smacks you right between the eyes is not real, it is an artifact of reporting. 842 did not die on July 9; 948 did not die on July 8. 842 Deaths were reported to the New York Times on July 9, 948 reported on July 8.
Deaths, and Cases, do not really bottom out every four-five days, the volunteer reporters take weekends and holidays off and so don’t report as much. Today is Friday. We can expect a drop this weekend, I predict starting today. That drop will not be real.
