Rhode Island’s new data for COVID-19 shows positive trends again today, although (again) deaths remain too many.  As that dataset continues to remain stubbornly consistent, as the others decline, it should begin to change the way we think of the disease.

Most especially, consider that the number is much higher outside of the hospital than in it.  Over the past four weeks, an average of eight people have died outside the hospital, but an average of a less than five inside.  The reason, readers will know, is that nursing homes have been the real danger zone for this virus.

This doesn’t make the lives lost less of a source of sorrow, but how we feel about the world we live in depends how we perceive the threats.  If somebody had told us, before this all started, that the Wuhan virus was largely a disease for the elderly, we would all have felt differently about it… and responded differently.

Turning back to the positives, number of new cases in general continued to slow, with the 14-day infection rate down to 0.61 (with one being the pivot point between expansion and contraction).  If we assume a 14-day life for “active” sickness, the number should dip below 4,000 tomorrow.

Meanwhile, hospitalizations continue to decrease, despite upward revisions going back most of the way to the very start.

 

• Cases:
  • Projection for 5/8: 10,694
  • Actual for 5/8: 10,779
  • Projection for 5/9: 10,936
• Hospitalizations:
  • Projection for 5/8: 300
  • Actual for 5/8: 312
  • Projection for 5/9: 294
• Deaths:
  • Projection for 5/8: 394
  • Actual for 5/8: 399
  • Projection for 5/9: 405