When will the pandemic be over?
The facts are undeniable: The seven-day average of new cases in the United States has fallen by 74 percent (see chart below) since their January peak, hospitalizations have gone down by 58 percent, and deaths have dropped by 42 percent. Meanwhile, more than 70 million doses of vaccine have gone into American arms. At some point—maybe even some point relatively soon—the remaining emergency measures that were introduced in March 2020 will come to an end. But when, exactly, should that happen?
The measure that the epidemiology experts are giving as a way to know when we might be through the worst of this pandemic, is to use the number of deaths attributed to the flu virus. Just as with the flu, the Coronavirus will most likely never be totally eradicated. It probably will always be with us. However, there will be a point at which it is contained.
According to the experts that point is equal to the average deaths that we currently experience from the flu. We, on average, have about 100 deaths a day in the United States from the flu. So, using that as a measure as the experts suggest, the Coronavirus will be essentially contained when daily deaths are down to approximately 100 a day.
As you can see from the chart above, we are down to a seven day average of 2,000 deaths a day. So that is far from where we need to be. But as you can tell from the above chart, deaths per day are dropping dramatically. So, the question becomes, if we were to continue at this rate of decrease in daily deaths, when might we be down to the daily death rate of the flu?
In the below chart, I have developed a model based on the daily deaths of the Coronavirus from February 2020 until the beginning of March of this year.
My forecast is that the daily death rate in the United States could be at a level that we could say the Covid-19 pandemic is essentially contained in as little as 2 to 3 months from now.
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