Where are We?
The U.S. has had just over ¾ million confirmed cases so far and around 40,000 deaths as of noon Sunday. Around 109,000 cases have closed with 63% recovering and 37% dying. Of course there are hundreds of thousands of non confirmed cases yet these are mild strains of the virus or perhaps people with better immune systems.
As a percentage of the population this would be a non news issue, 1 in 9,000. The problem of course is that the number of deaths has doubled in just one week. Some good news is that the social distancing and quarantine is working, the total number of confirmed cases has only grown by 50%. The confirmed cases are important as those are the hardest hit individuals and the cases that will produce the deaths. The idea that the death rate is much lower due to the number of unconfirmed infections is not germane as these are the mild cases. Around 2% of cases in the U.S. require ICU treatment.
Here in Oklahoma we have had around 140 deaths as of noon on Sunday. That is low, around one in 25,000 people have died. The death rate isn't that rapid, the rate of spread of the disease is pretty high but we appear to have a much weaker strain of the virus.
Governor Stitt addressed the State on Wednesday and appears to have a May 1st date for relaxing the already lax restrictions. People generally are staying home when possible, roads are at maybe ¾ capacity during rush hour, the ICU beds still have around 42% available, we have not overran our hospitals thanks to the restrictions in place. The most likely scenario is that on May 1st the few that are still not back at work will start going back and ramping things back up.
