Omicron and in-person teaching
I’m fortunate to work at an institution that requires full vaccination, including boosters. Princeton University also is fairly aggressive on s...
There it is. Time to double the number of deaths, as of today: US 7.2 days, NJ 6.5 days, NY 7.3 days.
The number of deaths approximately reflects new infections as of about 2-3 weeks ago. Therefore the number of new infections was doubling every 7 days. Since infection itself lasts about 2 weeks, i.e. an average of 1 week, this means that the newly infected were approximately equal to the newly recovered. That suggests the number of infected peaked – and is therefore should be on the decline.
Note that deaths is a good way to track the course of covid-19. Even if underreported, the degree of underreporting is less likely to change than the number of confirmed cases.
Why does Utah have a negative doubling time?
Yes, I saw that. We tracked down the cause. The Utah records had a day when the cumulative number of deaths decreased, which is of course impossible. We added a safeguard to the code to deal with such record-keeping errors. Thank you for flagging this.