Why virus deaths are down but may soon rise.
The coronavirus trends in the United States are pretty dark right now. The number of new cases is surging, unlike in most other affluent countries. And Fourth of July gatherings have the potential to make a bad situation worse.
But there is one important bright spot: The percentage of virus patients who die from it has continued to decline.
This explains an otherwise confusing contrast. Coronavirus deaths in the U.S. have been falling for most of the last 10 weeks — to about 600 a day recently, down from more than 2,000 in late April — even though the overall caseload was holding fairly steady for much of that period and has lately been spiking.
Here’s how to understand it, based on two main causes — and one big caveat:
Medical treatment has improved. Doctors and nurses often diagnose the virus more quickly than they did a few months ago, thanks in part to more widespread testing. They have also had some success treating symptoms with remdesivir and other drugs. “The sooner you get treatment to people, the better they’re going to do,” my colleague Apoorva Mandavilli, a health reporter, says.
Older people are being more careful. The virus is usually rougher on older people, and many have responded with extra caution. As a result, they make up a falling percentage of new virus cases — which has helped reduce the death rate.
The caveat: Deaths may be on the verge of rising again. The flip side of the greater caution among the elderly is that many middle-aged and younger people are acting as if they’re invulnerable. Their increased social activity has fueled an explosion in cases over the last three weeks, which in turn could lead to a rise in deaths soon.
The timing remains unclear. In the spring, the trend line for deaths lagged the trend line for cases by only about a week. But that may have reflected the relatively modest number of tests being done at the time.
With testing now more widespread, it’s possible that the death data will lag the case data by closer to a month. (In a typical fatal case, the death comes three to five weeks after contraction of the virus.) If that’s correct, coronavirus deaths may start rising again any day.
Even the one piece of positive virus news is looking shaky.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/...ers-joe-biden-your-thursday-briefing.amp.html
The coronavirus trends in the United States are pretty dark right now. The number of new cases is surging, unlike in most other affluent countries. And Fourth of July gatherings have the potential to make a bad situation worse.
But there is one important bright spot: The percentage of virus patients who die from it has continued to decline.
This explains an otherwise confusing contrast. Coronavirus deaths in the U.S. have been falling for most of the last 10 weeks — to about 600 a day recently, down from more than 2,000 in late April — even though the overall caseload was holding fairly steady for much of that period and has lately been spiking.
Here’s how to understand it, based on two main causes — and one big caveat:
Medical treatment has improved. Doctors and nurses often diagnose the virus more quickly than they did a few months ago, thanks in part to more widespread testing. They have also had some success treating symptoms with remdesivir and other drugs. “The sooner you get treatment to people, the better they’re going to do,” my colleague Apoorva Mandavilli, a health reporter, says.
Older people are being more careful. The virus is usually rougher on older people, and many have responded with extra caution. As a result, they make up a falling percentage of new virus cases — which has helped reduce the death rate.
The caveat: Deaths may be on the verge of rising again. The flip side of the greater caution among the elderly is that many middle-aged and younger people are acting as if they’re invulnerable. Their increased social activity has fueled an explosion in cases over the last three weeks, which in turn could lead to a rise in deaths soon.
The timing remains unclear. In the spring, the trend line for deaths lagged the trend line for cases by only about a week. But that may have reflected the relatively modest number of tests being done at the time.
With testing now more widespread, it’s possible that the death data will lag the case data by closer to a month. (In a typical fatal case, the death comes three to five weeks after contraction of the virus.) If that’s correct, coronavirus deaths may start rising again any day.
Even the one piece of positive virus news is looking shaky.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/...ers-joe-biden-your-thursday-briefing.amp.html
