Reminder! I am not a doctor. I’ve never wanted to be a doctor. I have friends who are nurses and doctors, but I leave the medical stuff to them.
I am a scientists, though. And I do know how to do some mathematics and statistics, too. So my goal with these posts is to take the numbers and information you see daily, and put them into some sort of context.
New Numbers
Today, again, I’m only going to post Mississippi numbers:
Today MSDH is reporting 550 new cases of COVID-19 in Mississippi, with 6 new deaths. The total of #coronavirus cases since March 11 is now 25,066, with 1,022 deaths. See more case details and important preventive steps at https://t.co/QP8mlJ41AN pic.twitter.com/dNePtsquxi
— MS Dept of Health (@msdh) June 26, 2020
That tweet from the Mississippi Department of Health shows the tally as of last night.
The numbers have dropped by half, but these numbers are still among the Top 10 highest single-day totals since this pandemic began. The likely reason that the number of deaths today is lower than average is due to the “lag time” between infection, mild illness, hospitalization, and death. Research shows that it can take – on average – 10 days for COVID-19 to kill someone once hospitalized.
As discussed yesterday, the death rate in Mississippi, given the numbers collected by the MS Dept of Health, is around four-percent of known-infected people. That means for every 100 people who get sick, four eventually die.
Since 500 new cases were noted. That means, if the current death-rate holds, 20 people may eventually die from these new cases.
New Research
The CDC has added to the list of potential symptoms for those infected with COVID-19.
The CDC and the medical community continue to note that the incubation period for COVID-19 is about 2-14 days. With most people developing symtpoms between Day 2 and Day 9. The average amongst researched “infected individuals” is 5.1 days.
In other words, on average, it takes about five days to develop symptoms.
From that point, anecdotally, it takes another one to three days for people to get tested. Then another 48 hours to get results.
So, from the point of infection to the realization that someone is infected with COVID-19 it could be as little as five days (two days to get symptoms, one to get tested, two more to get results) or as long as 19 days (14 days to get symptoms, three to get tested, and two tog et results).
In either case, at any point during the time a person is infected, research suggests said infected person is capable of passing COVID-19 along to the next person.
Bottom Line
This is why the medical community says wearing a mask, washing your hands and practicing social distancing is so important. People could be infected and not know it for nearly three weeks.
