Weekly Indicators for May 11 - 15 at Seeking Alpha

 - by New Deal democrat

My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Noteworthy this week is that mortgage rates have fallen to new all-time lows, and mortgage applications, not coincidentally, have rebounded sharply.

This is good news since housing normally leads the way in economic recoveries. This is an important positive for whenever the time comes that more normal life is able to safely resume.

As usual, clicking over and reading helps reward me a little bit for my efforts.

Coronavirus dashboard for May 16: 10 US States worse than the worst country, only 7 ready to transition to “test, trace, and isolate” regimen

 - by New Deal democrat

Here is the update through yesterday (May 15).

As usual, significant developments are in italics. 

Before we get to the US raw numbers, here are a few graphic comparisons.

The worst country in the world for deaths on a per capita basis is Ecuador, at 7 per million: 

The US is in 5th place, at 4.5 per million, behind Sweden, the UK, and Belgium.

By contrast, the worst US State, NJ, has had 19 deaths per million in the past week: 

8 other States - MA, CT, NY, RI, IL, DE, MD, and PA, plus DC, all have had more deaths per million in the past week than Ecuador. Even NY, which has cut the rate of deaths per million by 70% from peak, still had more than 10 deaths per million in the past week:

Now, on to the US data.

I will restart giving the daily increase in infections if States that have “reopened” start to increase significantly again. The preliminary evidence is that customers are largely staying away from reopened businesses in those States.

Number of new and total reported Infections (from Johns Hopkins via arcgis.com and 91-divoc.com):

• Number: 23,399, total 1,443,397 (vs. day/day high of +36,161 on April 24)
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There has been a 1/3 decrease in the number of new cases in the US from peak. The US nevertheless has the worst record in the world, by far.

Number of deaths and rate of increase in testing (from COVID Tracking Project)

• ***Number of deaths: 1645, total 81,729 (vs. day/day peak of +2,700 April 29)
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• Seven day average of deaths: 1,424 (vs. 2,058 peak on April 21)
• Number of tests: 378,410 (new daily peak*)
• Ratio of positive tests to total: 14.4:1 (vs. 16.0:1 on May 10* - target is 15:1)
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• 7 day average of tests: 333,000* (new high)
• 7 day average of positive tests to total: (14.8:1* vs. target of 15:1)

*These numbers exclude 113,489 past negative tests reported by NJ on May 11

South Korea decisively contained COVID-19 once its ratio of total vs. positive tests rose to 15:1. This was on a much lower scale, on the order of 900 infections nationwide and 15,000 tests. The US has 6.5x as many people as South Korea, but 25x the number of new infections daily. So the US as a whole is far from being able to lift its lockdowns. 

The weekly average of new infections per 1 million population peaked at 10 in South Korea. Only 7 US States currently meet that target: AK, HI, MT, VT, WY, ID, and WV - I.e., 7 rural States and one island State:

Those lucky 7 are the only that currently can justify lifting their lockdowns Statewide, provided they had the ability in place to conduct a thorough tracing program.

Summary for May 15

• The number of daily new infections, adjusted for testing, appears to have peaked four weeks ago. There has been a decline of about 1/3 in new infections since then.
• The number of daily new deaths appears have peaked about 3 weeks ago.
• The trend number of daily tests has improved dramatically in the past 3 weeks to nearly 300,000. Better still, for the last 2 weeks, new infections have declined, even with higher testing - a very positive sign.
• The increase in infections in the rest of the US in late April and early May was mostly an artifact of the dramatic increase in testing in the rest of the country.
• My personal suspicion remains that the actual number of total infections in the US is a little under 5x the official number, or roughly 7 million, over 2% of the total population. Now that testing has improved, that rate will hopefully slowly improve over time as well.
• Based on testing, a significant portion of the rest of the US outside of the NYC and other large metro areas could soon transition to a “test, trace, and isolate” regimen, but only 7 States as a whole. With few exceptions there is no sign whatsoever of the necessary preconditions being put in place.