Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: May 15 Update

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through May 15. I don’t have anything special to say today, so I thought I’d take a look at my April 28 post that lists a dozen things I tentatively believed about COVID-19. How have those held up?

I’ll revise and extend three of them. On #5, I may have been a little pessimistic. A full suite of countermeasures, rigorously enforced and widely complied with, probably reduces deaths by more than half. Maybe 60-65 percent?

On #8 I was completely wrong. Summer is five weeks away, and it’s obvious we’ll have 150-200,000 deaths by then. In my defense, how could I have guessed that our president would urge everyone to go out and party at the first sign of declining death rates?

On #9, I probably shouldn’t have entertained even the idea of the slightest relaxation of countermeasures.

The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here. The Public Health Agency of Sweden is here.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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