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Coronavirus Update: Death Rate As of 3-26-2020
The big news today is that the US now has more reported COVID-19 cases than any other country. Remain calm. Remember that our rates of infection remain far below those of the two hardest-hit countries, Italy and Spain. The US has about 5.5 times the population of Italy and about 7 times the population of Spain. So it is no surprise that we have the most cases.
I’ve reviewed all of the data for today (March 26) from Johns Hopkins, and there are no significant departures from prior trends.
The US death rate remains quite low, as illustrated by this graph:
You may have trouble finding the trend line for Germany. It is indistinguishable from the line for the US, at this scale, down at the very bottom of the graph.
Italy and Spain remain the countries of greatest concern. Though not apparent from the graph above, the rate of increase in reported deaths has declined in both countries. The daily figures are a bit erratic, so I’ve presented this decline graphically with a data smoothing technique, by using the 4-day moving average:
This graph demonstrates that the increasing death toll in Italy and Spain, though terrible, is not growing exponentially.
ChiCom delenda est.
Published in Healthcare
I suspect the lockdown can’t hold much longer. Soon they will find some “science” to allow us out and companies to function again.
Perhaps a ray of hope for Italy and Spain, that this thing will not spiral out of control. Speaking of death rate, I’ve noticed that both Israel and The Czech Republic (Chechia) have been competing for the lowest rate of deaths for countries that are significantly infected. Both have extremely few deaths compared to numbers of infections.
Jerry, your stuff is, as always, excellent. What are the prospects for separating NY from the US numbers, given the anomaly the City represents? (I know that’s a lot more work, which is why I’m hoping you’ll do it so I won’t have to try to do it myself. I’m awful with graphs. ;) )
michael levitt, biophysicist and nobel prize winner 2013 in chemistry, agrees with your analysis
Indeed. So far, my takeaways from all this are: (1) wash your hands; (2) don’t live in a place with a population density of 26,000 people per square mile.
With regard to ending lock downs, a potential game changer is the introduction of virus antibody testing, which is cheaper, faster, and easier to produce than the PCR detection method currently being used. Virus antibody in a person’s blood means that he has or has had a virus infection and is developing or has developed immunity to the virus.
Aside from testing possible cases of COVID-19, it may be that many people are already immune to the virus. There are 4 strains of coronavirus that circulate in the US population. These strains are one of the causes of the common cold. If there is cross immunity then people shown to be immune can be returned to work.
Except in NH where our governor has just today expanded and lengthened to 4 May the restrictions- including closing our small (and frigid) but mighty beaches. I’m furious. His father is our neighbor and I don’t know how I’ll greet John or Nancy when we walk EODVizsla today. I hadn’t been to Shaw’s (an otherwise very well run regional chain market) in a week and went yesterday and they are following “new guidelines” which have people skulking around the store while shopping. NO ONE made eye contact or smiled or chatted as they usually do. There were empty shelves and eggs and milk and some other goods were rationed. (Siggi’s yoghurt that my husband eats every day is not on that list.) Incredibly, there were yellow tape markers laid down at checkout to line one up and there was no music playing in the background. What a grim place.
Sorry to hear that things are so grim out there. It was heading that way in Cleveland last week, but things are picking up now and store shelves are filling up again, and shoppers don’t seem so freaked out as they were before.
In the end, we’ll probably see that better hand-washing, nursing home standards, and antiviral treatments will mean that Covid19 will result in a net saving of lives for 2020.
This is how we get Bernie Sander’s economy without actually electing him…
Henry, this is a great question, and I’m going to do a separate post on the issue shortly.
The challenge is that right after my post about NYC, which was on Monday Mar. 24, Johns Hopkins changed their data files. They no longer report separate results for US jurisdictions in the time series files.
The Johns Hopkins daily report file was also updated. As of yesterday (Mar. 26), it reports daily data for over 3,400 jurisdictions, including over 3,100 separate jurisdictions in the US. Reconstructing a time series from such data would be very time-consuming.
Hence my request to you. I have stuff to do — laundry, dishes, writing software, sharing my opinion. Talking to the dog. Sometimes I make coffee and grab snacks. My life is full, though not unpleasant. I simply don’t have time to make attractive multi-colored graphs that trenchantly illuminate the scope of this global crisis. Also, I lack the skill.
Maybe I’ll learn to play the guitar. Do you think this thing will last long enough for that? I don’t know. I’m not very musical.
I’ll learn to play Cowbell and we’ll form a pop group! Think of all the groupies!
Didn’t you get the memo? We’re not allowed to group.
Maybe we’ll have a bunch of dispersed groupies….
This has been the standard way of assessing virus epidemics for many years. PCR is very new. Now that we have antivirals that work, PCR is more important but analysis of such things as death rate (CFR) will depend on finding how many asymptomatic cases there were. This was a critical insight on Polio back in the 50s when it became possible to do convalescent serum testing for the virus and it was found that poor children in the slums of Mexico City ALL were positive but there was no paralytic case. Polio is a disease of cleanliness. The first reported paralytic cases were in isolated villages in Sweden. Small children are not harmed. Chicken pox is similar. Over the age of 20, chicken pox has a mortality of around 25%.
Is it true of mumps also? That they are worse for adults?
That sounds extraordinarily high.
I just asked my wife to give me piano lessons. Think a 69-year old can learn to do that?
We haven’t been in any kind of strict lock down but it still seems that people are slacking off. The difference in traffic for instance from the 1st and last of the week has been pretty significant.
If not, it simply calls into question your wife’s skill as a piano instructor. Because I’m sure you’re a model student.
She hasn’t ever really taught anyone. But she played for a lot of kids’ church choirs, school programs, etc.
My late wife and all my children played piano. I’m completely unmusical, but it’s a joy to hear it played in the home.
So give it a try. ;)
Haven’t you heard? Those who appeal for calm just want people to die!
I don’t know about mortality rates but I had mumps when I was 17 and it was awful.
I played the trumpet in high school, so at least I know what notes are!
I played drums. Notes are for other people.
We’ll make a movie about you starring Jim Carey and call it “Drum and Drummer.”
live free or die?