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Don’t Panic, Michigan
With 232 reported deaths, Tuesday was a record-setting day for Michigan’s COVID-19 pandemic.
Not only was it easily the highest single-day death toll, topping the 205 reported on April 10, it came after three straight days with counts near 80.
However, it isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds. There hasn’t been a major outbreak in a second part of the state and Metro Detroit’s health-care system hasn’t suddenly collapsed. There are simply a couple significant quirks in the way deaths are being reported.
First, the 232 was reported on a Tuesday. A clear pattern has developed in much of the US and Europe — daily deaths tend to dip on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays before rising (often sharply) on Tuesdays. Why? Because even in a pandemic, things don’t work quite as efficiently on the weekend. Every day at 3 pm, Michigan announces all the deaths it had received by 10:00 that morning.
That means, on a Thursday, most of the deaths in the state report happened on Wednesday, if not earlier. Ideally, every COVID-19 death would be reported immediately, but reality doesn’t work that way. There are always a number of weekend deaths that don’t get passed along until Monday, which puts them into Tuesday’s report on the state website.
