There is a "death lag, but if you look at the data from the CDC, we should have seen a steady "stream" of deaths based on the sheer number of cases we continued to have. But we have not.
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If Deaths lag by 20 days roughly, then we should have still kept having way beyond the number of deaths we have. A lot of the cases for testing positive are including asymptomatic people as basically anyone can seek a test now.
Purely anecdotal. I had a friend who was real sick with the "flu" in November, she's in shape, competed at IMAZ and had a horrible race. Her agency is putting all of their officers through anti-body testing and she came back positive for anti-bodies.
I think most agree the lag is between 25-35 days, so about a month. Unfortunately the only way to know for sure is to have it play out. I truly hope there is not an increase in deaths, and it is solely related to increased testing, and testing of asymptomatic individuals. I believe we will know by mid August what some of these effects truly are. I hope that the death rate continues to decline, I would rather watch football and basketball and go to class in person, but I doubt any of that will happen.
My anecdotal experience comes from being in the COVID ICU’s at a major medical center, and seeing people very sick for a very long time prior to dying. I am also admittedly in a social media bubble full of nurses and physicians from around the country. Many of them ICU providers, most of them are saying it is getting significantly worse daily(ie units at capacity, non-ICUs being converted and so on). Not to mention the new residents that just started;)
I don’t work in the hospital anymore, and am in school full time, so @Devildoc will have better information than me now anyways. Here is to hoping though!