Jerry Bowyer | On April 11, 2020

Wood carved Crucifix.

The most influential modeling system puts peak death rate at yesterday. Here’s a link to the CNN story (I’ll put the quote at the bottom of this write-up): https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-04-10-20/h_1f905ee7677f8024ad1670db650ad595

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

If this data is right, death peaked on Good Friday. We’ll see in the next few days, of course, but I remember talking to my wife earlier this week wondering if Good Friday would be the day of the top and the beginning of the reversal. So far, that is what the data are saying. I don’t claim to understand the mysteries of Providence, the nature of cause and effect, how God guides history or shapes it. But I do think that this ‘coincidence’ is deeply meaningful. Good Friday is the peak of death.

This seems so much more appropriate than the President’s (well meaning, I think) target to try to have things open by Easter and the churches full. I understood, and even liked, what he was saying. But it smacked too much of us and our power, We were going to set the date. We were going to overcome through ingenuity and sheer will. That would have been an Easter of our making.

But this Good Friday peak (if it holds) savors more of a plan above our reckoning and our power. Of something ‘in the heavens’ between the ‘powers and principalities’.

We did our part (sort of) we stayed in our homes (sort of) while the Angel of death passed over and instead of washing feet we washed hands. But if today, Holy Saturday has a death toll lower than Good Friday and at Easter death continues to retreat, etc. Then that will to my mind look like a gift beyond our poor Lenten fast in which we emulated more Israel’s grumbling in the wilderness than we did Christ’s faithful patience. But that’s what grace is.

Quote from CNN story below:

“The influential coronavirus model by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation now calls today the peak day for new deaths, and revises several key numbers slightly.

The model update, released this afternoon, keeps peak hospital resource use on Saturday. But it moves peak death numbers to today instead of Sunday, and the number now peaks at a projected 1,983 — down from about 2,200 in an earlier version.”

Quote from University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation summary here:

“Predicted peak for daily COVID-19 deaths. At the national level, current data suggest that the predicted peak for daily COVID-19 deaths could be approximately April 10, reaching 1,983 deaths (estimate range of 500 to 5,583). These projections suggest that the US may be nearing its peak for COVID-19 deaths; subsequently, we may soon see the number of daily deaths decreasing at the national level.”

http://www.healthdata.org/covid/updates

Spreadsheet is available for download at the bottom of that page, and I’ve checked row 2 (which is national data), column J. Indeed, the model does show the mean peaking on Good Friday.

Jerry Bowyer

Jerry Bowyer is a Forbes contributor, contributing editor of AffluentInvestor.com, and Senior Fellow in Business Economics at The Center for Cultural Leadership.

Jerry has compiled an impressive record as a leading thinker in finance and economics. He worked as an auditor and a tax consultant with Arthur Anderson, as Vice President of the Beechwood Company which is the family office associated with Federated Investors, and has consulted in various privatization efforts for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. He founded the influential economic think tank, the Allegheny Institute, and has lectured extensively at universities, businesses and civic groups.

Jerry has been a member of three investment committees, among which is Benchmark Financial, Pittsburgh’s largest financial services firm. Jerry had been a regular commentator on Fox Business News and Fox News. He was formerly a CNBC Contributor, has guest-hosted “The Kudlow Report”, and has written for CNBC.com, National Review Online, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as many other publications. He is the author of The Bush Boom and more recently The Free Market Capitalist’s Survival Guide, published by HarperCollins. Jerry is the President of Bowyer Research.

Jerry consulted extensively with the Bush White House on matters pertaining to the recent economic crisis. He has been quoted in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, The International Herald Tribune and various local newspapers. He has been a contributing editor of National Review Online, The New York Sun and Townhall Magazine. Jerry has hosted daily radio and TV programs and was one of the founding members of WQED’s On-Q Friday Roundtable. He has guest-hosted the Bill Bennett radio program as well as radio programs in Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles.

Jerry is the former host of WorldView, a nationally syndicated Sunday-morning political talk show created on the model of Meet The Press. On WorldView, Jerry interviewed distinguished guests including the Vice President, Treasury Secretary, HUD Secretary, former Secretary of Sate Condoleezza Rice, former Presidential Advisor Carl Rove, former Attorney General Edwin Meese and publisher Steve Forbes.

Jerry has taught social ethics at Ottawa Theological Hall, public policy at Saint Vincent’s College, and guest lectured at Carnegie Mellon’s graduate Heinz School of Public Policy. In 1997 Jerry gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Robert Morris University. He was the youngest speaker in the history of the school, and the school received more requests for transcripts of Jerry’s speech than at any other time in its 120-year history.

Jerry lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Susan, and the youngest three of their seven children.