Are We Ready To Peak Next Tuesday?

Just for the record, here’s my crude eyeball guess about the growth of COVID-19 in America:

This suggests a total death toll through summer of about 60,000. I have a hard time believing this, but both my own projections and the expert modelers seem to have converged right around here. It would leave us with a final death toll of about 0.2 per thousand by the end of summer, which would be extraordinary. I admit that I can’t account for this considering the clear evidence that our response to COVID-19 was messy and chaotic. Maybe God really does watch over fools and children.

POSTSCRIPT: Different states and cities will peak at different times, so there will still be some areas that are growing even when the country reaches its overall peak. By the end of the week, however, pretty much every state should have peaked and should start declining.

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We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

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