Posted by The model said 194 yesterday and I called “under” based on what I see as a trend of plateauing and hopefully eventually a decrease in infections. Who was right?
I’m going to declare a win in this battle. King County came in at 147 infections yesterday.
The bigger win though was 0 deaths yesterday in King County. In fact, there have only been 3 deaths in the past week. Compare that to 1,147 confirmed infections, that’s a 0.26% mortality rate. That’s way lower than the original expectations for this virus or even what we’ve seen the previous 4 months. Since February in King County, the reported mortality rate is 4.7%. Same is true for hospitalizations – only 3 hospitalizations, 0.52% hospitalization rate, vs. historic average of 13.5% of cases.
What’s driving this decrease? One factor is the age demographic of people contracting the virus. People in their 20s, 30s, and 40s are much less likely to need hospitalization and suffer fewer complications. We know infections are up in younger demographics.
I’m no epidemiologist. I do wonder if this is kind of normal scenario when it comes to viruses and the natural spread through a population. Or, has the virus mutated to be less lethal?
Back to the model: The model lost a little power with the downshift in infections the past few days. The model says 199 infections today. Again, I’m going to take the under.
