Colorado COVID-19 update for 4/5/2020

Reminder – I’m not an epidemiologist or doctor. My observations below are based on a very simple math model and are observations only. If anything I say contradicts actual experts (Donald and FoxNews do not qualify), please, please take their advice over mine.

First the bad news – we’re still not testing enough people. Between 4/4 and 4/5 there were 1,873 tests. That’s barely different from the day before (1,829) and still well down from the peak of testing (2,058) on 3/25. We should be seeing more testing every single day, but we don’t. And it’s not something that Governor Polis is at fault for. No, responsibility for this lands squarely on the shoulders of of the President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump.

More bad news – the death rate is still climbing. When I started tracking the death rate back on 3/13, it was right around 1%. It started slowly climbing to about 2% on 3/22, and it’s risen to 2.8% as of yesterday. And given deaths lag infections by about 2 weeks, it’ll be a while before it starts to drop, even if everything we’re doing today is working to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Now for some mixed news – the rate of new infections has roughly stable at 400 per day for the last four days (varying from 386 to 445). If this stays this way, it’s good news. But given we aren’t testing enough people, we don’t know if it’s really good news or if we’re still just not catching the cases. It’s probably a mix of both, frankly.

And now the good news – it’s looking like we may be flattening the curve. In the last few days the dates at which my simple projections estimated when we’d run out of hospital beds has shifted five days later from when it was originally projected. The date when we exceed ICU capacity has shifted two days later, although we’re still probably going to run out eventually. And the date at which we’d infect the entire state under a pure growth model is now nine days later.

So let’s keep doing what we’re doing – stay home, ignore Donald, wear masks when you must go out, wash hands, ignore Donald, social distance, and ignore Donald.

We will get through this.

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