100K Dead in USA from COVID

The 100K milestone will be reached by the end of May 2020. It only took 3 months to get to this number, which is higher than any other country. As of today the John Hopkins COVID-19 tracking website shows a 5 day uptrend in new cases for the US. All other countries and trending down. It remains to be seen how relaxing lockdown rules will affect the infection rate. News reports this weekend showed scenes of people not wearing masks and ignoring social distancing guidelines. Even people who try to be safe can make mistakes by touching their face after they remove their mask. Or, they touch something that was just handled by another person, or they stop to talk to someone in a store. Social habits are had to change.

The death rate from the flu is about 1%. For COVID, the rate is 3.4%. Minnesota is reporting 19,845 confirmed cases with 852 dead and Wisconsin reports 14,877 confirmed with 507 dead. If you apply a 3.4% death rate, the number of confirmed cases in Minnesota should be around 25,000. Wisconsin has been in the news lately because the state supreme court ruled against the governor's stay-at-home order. The governor basically told everyone to do whatever they wanted after that. I expect Wisconsin will soon catch up to Minnesota's number of confirmed cases because of that. Locally, the county I live in has 259 confirmed and 1 death for a population of 150K. Businesses are starting to call people back to work at restaurants and casinos. Despite all of the safety precautions, I am worried that my girlfriend will get infected and bring it home with her, like she did with the flu back in March. I mainly follow these numbers from a financial perspective. If confirmed cases increase, as I expect they will in the next few weeks, it may be wise to hedge your investments by moving into cash or bonds until we start to see a real reduction in confirmed cases.