COVID-19 in Mississippi grew persistently for the first hundred days
Cases and deaths have both grown persistently since March 11, 2020. (Data are the daily reports given by MSDH.)
Deaths lagged by 5 days - the latency between COVID-19's first symptoms and death.
The Stay-in-Place proclamation(yellow marker) arrested the exponential growth of the cases as announced daily, leaving a quadratic growth phase (the darker red dotted trendline) until the relaxation of the Stay-at-Home orders (green marker). Since that time, there has been a fairly steady report of 275 cases a day (the lighter data points and trendline).
Deaths have continued to grow quadratically.
This dichotomy between case reports and deaths is explored in the next tab.
The cumulative number of COVID-19 deaths grew exponentially for the first few days of the Mississippi epidemic, just as in New York City. This threat cannot be understated. Such an initial growth rate would point to 24 deaths a day on April 1, ∼10,000 deaths a day by May and millions a day shortly thereafter.
The mortality rate was arrested at 5/day when Stay-in-Place was ordered (left graph), causing deaths to accumulate linearly (right graph). These orders have had a lasting effect that has outlived subsequent orders (starting at the green dot) relaxing social distancing.
The per-capita number of community based COVID-19 Deaths is 12 per 100,000 thus far, which is near the median figure for the United States. This is less than a tenth of New York, so it is not surprising that few people in Mississippi know acquaintances who have contracted the virus.
