Friday Notes: CDC data update, increased COVID-19 testing, and a plea for a non-partisan decision-making

I’ve been tracking the CDC’s demographic breakdowns for cases and deaths for 3 weeks now. This week turned in largely the same results as the prior 2 weeks. Here’s how things look as of 4/30:

This week, the state of New York continued their antibody testing program, and found that in the latest batch of tests, 25% of people tested had COVID-19 antibodies present in their blood. The New York study is interesting because they claim their testing methodology to be more rigorous than other studies that have taken place around the country. If this number is an accurate representation of what happened in New York, the survival rate for all age groups, regardless of health status, is over 99.9%.

Increased Testing Buoys Daily Case Totals

This week, we saw a dramatic increase in testing nationwide. From 4/23-4/30, the average number of daily tests was 259,000. In the period prior to that, the average daily case total was 157,000. So in the last 8 days, we’ve seen an average daily increase of 102,000 tests performed.

Interestingly, with the dramatic increase in testing, we didn’t see a dramatic increase in new daily cases. For the 4/23-4/30 period, the average new daily case count nationwide was 29,300. For the 4/15-4/22 period, the average new daily case count was 29,100. So, cases remained flat, despite testing increasing by 65% in this last 8-day period.

So, what does it mean? The numbers seem to run counter to what we’ve been hearing about all the hidden cases in our communities. This is just one person’s opinion, but I believe that when we take these numbers in conjunction with the recent antibody testing numbers, which seem to show that there was a massive spike in hidden infections in March, I think we have proof of herd immunity starting to happen in the U.S. The virus now has a smaller number of hosts to infect than it did in February in March. On a real basis, it appears that daily new cases actually decreased significantly over the last 8 days, when factoring in the large increase in testing. Of course, with openings happening around the country, we’ll have to watch these numbers to see where the trends lead.

A Plea for Non-partisan Decision Making

I started this website because I’m a business owner and my greatest fear is the needless destruction of small businesses–the mom and pop shops, small groceries, diners, and coffee shops–that give our towns and cities life and variety that we all love and cherish as Americans. These business owners are our neighbors, family members, church friends, and more. They are democrat, republican, and independent, and they all hire and serve people from all political backgrounds.

Smart business people don’t care about a customer’s political affiliation. It doesn’t factor into the equation at all. In short, small businesses are non-partisan by nature. They rely on people of all political stripes to purchase goods or services in order to keep the doors open.

Sadly, a lot of these businesses are never going to come back after the COVID-19 crisis is over. That’s why we owe it to our communities to be honest about the statistics we’re seeing. It’s crystal clear at this point: Healthy people should be allowed to go back to work. Businesses shouldn’t be limited to absurdities such as 10% capacities. We shouldn’t need to wait for endless 14-day periods to reopen more and more economic sectors. For the extremely large number of people not in the vulnerable categories the reopening needs to be big and it needs to be now.

COVID-19 is real. It has had a devastating effect on the elderly and sick. But let’s not make America’s cure for COVID-19 worse than the disease.

Open it up.