Yesterday's US death toll from CoVid was just over 1200, the day before it was 1500. Rolling averages are probably the better way to understand this data, since over the holiday weekend, many counties did not report, causing a bump up in reported stats for Tuesday and Wednesday. However, Thursday's number (1200) is probably close to a reported daily death total.
We had gone as low as 600-700 reported deaths nationwide just before Memorial Day and it's too soon for Memorial Day to be a big factor in those numbers. It is not too soon for community transmission to go up, especially in places where people are not wearing masks.
Pennsylvania and Illinois surpassed New York yesterday in terms of numbers of deaths. In Florida,
studies of CV19 in wastewater show far more evidence of the virus than anticipated, leading researchers to believe that the excess deaths in Florida this year put the actual death toll in Florida much higher than reported. An estimate of excess deaths in NYC shows an
additional possible 5000 deaths through May 2, which is lower than some anticipated. Some factors may include lack of rapid response to life threatening conditions within the NYC medical system, including EMT work.
If the US settles into a long tail of CV19 (so far, that's what's happening) and the average number of deaths per day is 1000, then by end of June, we'll have nearly 150,000 deaths, putting us higher in the per capita ranks of CoVid deaths than Ireland or possibly Sweden. However, Sweden and UK continue to climb in overall death rates from CoVid, while Spain is finally slowing considerably, as is Belgium, although it's certainly not the case that those nations have CoVid under control. But it is slowing down in Spain and Belgium. Spain is reopening.
Currently, nations like France are opening their borders to certain permitted forms of international travel, but only within the EU. The NYTimes published a piece by reporters who tried to travel around Europe and it was sobering.
Will the EU allow the US and UK to travel within it, any time soon? Probably not. Will Canada and Mexico permit Americans to travel within their borders? Stay tuned. Right now, both UK and USA are pretty much excluded from much international travel, and some US states still have 14-day self-quarantines, with controls at their borders (like Arizona).
I think the US needs to get its daily death tolls below 500 for a while before other nations are going to let us travel. China faces the loss of control over three major ports (in Israel, Sri Lanka and Australia) as those nations may prohibit ships from China landing within their ports. Some nations may want the US to be nearly CoVid free (I'm guessing Australia and New Zealand are not going to want visitors from the US or the EU or UK for a while).
Las Vegas opens next week and is already seeing an uptick in people out and about. CoVid cases and death counts in Nevada are low (helps to only have 3 million people, but about 75% live in Las Vegas, with another bunch near Reno/Tahoe). Nevada has about 410 total deaths so far and will obviously become a kind of test case about indoor transmission of CoVid in air conditioned spaces. Many distancing measures are supposed to be in place in casinos. Those 410 deaths constitute a much higher per capita rate than in neighboring states, so far. Utah, for example, only has 106. Utah and Nevada have similar total populations.
For whatever reason, projections for Arizona show that they are still on the upward slope of CoVid, with their peak projected sometime in July. CoVid has only just started to take hold as a community transmitted disease in the bigger cities there (not so much in northern Arizona). Again, we see A/C and recirculated area, large numbers of elderly people, etc. playing a big role.
Meanwhile,
farmworkers may join packing plant workers as populations with high rates of CoVid.