Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Coronavirus Report: March 2020
This post is a summary of reported COVID-19 cases and deaths in the US and Western Europe, for the month of March. My data source is Johns Hopkins (here), and they have posted their data through March 31. Their cutoff time is before the end of the day in the US, so while there may be additional cases and deaths reported from Tuesday, such reports will be included in the April figures.
My focus in this series of analyses has been on the US and Western Europe. This is not due to any lack of care for other countries. My special interest in the US is obvious, and I have principally focused on comparisons with the countries of Western Europe because: (1) they are the hardest hit thus far, particularly Italy and Spain; (2) they have health care systems relatively comparable to the US; and (3) I have greater confidence in the reliability of reporting from these two regions.
The Western European countries are essentially everything west of the old Iron Curtain, ranging in population from Germany to Luxembourg. I did not include the tiny countries such as Andorra or San Marino.
I. I Read The News Today, Oh Boy.
It’s been a rough month. On March 1, the US reported a mere 74 cases of COVID-19 and one solitary death. Western Europe reported 2,166 cases and 36 deaths as of March 1, almost all in Italy (1,694 cases, 34 deaths).
By March 31, 2020, the US has reported 3,873 deaths, with an additional 29,847 in Western Europe. Total reported cases are 188,172 in the US and 427,748 in Western Europe. Of course, this includes only cases that have been confirmed positive for COVID-19 infection. We have reason to believe that many more people have been infected, but I do not believe that we have a reliable way to estimate the totals at present.
Tuesday was a particularly bad day. The US reported 895 new deaths Tuesday, a new daily high for the second day in a row, and significantly more than the 511 deaths reported Monday. Western Europe also had a new daily high for the second day in a row, reporting 3,148 additional deaths, up from 2,769 Monday.
The US reported the largest daily increase in new cases, again for the second day in a row, up to 26,365 Tuesday from 20,921 Monday. Western Europe had more reported cases Tuesday, 32,932, but this was not a record high in this region.
There is mixed news regarding the decline in rates of increase, which I will cover in greater detail in Section IV below.
II. Deaths by Country
I have two charts to illustrate the increasing COVID-19 death toll.
The first chart is adjusted for population, showing total reported deaths by country, with the small countries of Western Europe combined (their combined population is about the same as Germany’s). This chart illustrates the low death toll in the US, thus far, compared to Western Europe. The chart shows total deaths reported by calendar date, but the trend line for each country starts when it first exceeded 0.5 deaths per million.
You can see the significantly higher death rates in Italy (light blue) and Spain (green), and an elevated rate in France (yellow). The graphs for the US (blue with yellow glow) and Germany (orange) largely overlap at the very bottom.
These figures look alarming, particularly for Italy and Spain, due to the scale. This chart reports deaths per million, so Italy’s figure, slightly over 200 deaths per million, is approximately 0.02% of the population. The US figure is about 12 deaths per million, which is approximately 0.001% of the population.
There is significant variability in the smaller countries that make up the Other Western Europe category. Two of them — Belgium and the Netherlands, at around 60 per million — have a death rate somewhat higher than France, and Switzerland, at around 50 per million, is only slightly below France. The others are lower.
The second chart is a bit confusing. It shows the daily rate of growth in reported deaths, by country. As you can see, the figures often vary significantly, and this is even after data smoothing using a four-day moving average.
You can see that the general trend line for the various countries is downward, which is good news. Italy’s reported deaths (light blue) are now increasing at less than 10% daily, and Spain (green) is under 15%.
The general tendency has been for a high rate of growth in the early period, later declining.
The trend line for the US (blue with yellow glow) is at about 25% daily growth, and generally declining.
I think that it is helpful to visualize these trends, and encouraging that they are generally heading downward. However, there is no guarantee that the decline in the growth rate will continue.
III. Reported Cases by Country
I have similar graphs for reported cases by country. I consider reported cases to be a less reliable indicator than reported deaths, due to limitations in testing. But it remains the second most important source of information, at present.
This chart shows reported cases per million, by country. As before, the chart shows figures by calendar date, but the trend line for each country begins when the country passes 10 cases per million.
Much has been made in some news reports about the US having the highest number of reported cases. This is true, with the US reporting 188,172 cases as of March 31, followed by Italy with 105,792. But the US has about 5.5 times the population of Italy. This chart puts the number of reported cases in the proper perspective.
Another thing that you should note is that the trend lines for reported cases are often quite different than for reported deaths. Italy and Spain are at the top in both measures, but notice that Germany, France, and Other Western Europe follow very similar trajectories in cases per million, while France is much higher, and Germany very low, in deaths per million. Also note that the UK is notably lower in reported cases per million than the United States, but notably higher in deaths per million.
In reported cases per million, Switzerland (at about 1,900) is higher than Italy. The highest of all is tiny Luxembourg, with almost 3,500 reported cases per million.
The next chart is the daily rate of growth in reported cases, by country. This one is a bit easier to read than the comparable chart in the preceding section. As you can see, it shows a general downward trend in all countries.
This does not mean that the number of cases reported each day is decreasing. On the contrary, it is generally increasing. But the rate of growth is declining, which is good news.
Some may claim that this chart demonstrates the effectiveness of the “lockdown” and other remedial measures. It does not. This information neither proves nor disproves the effectiveness of such measures. Italy did not implement a regional “lockdown” until March 8 (in Lombardy), and extended it to the nation on the following day (March 9). As you can see, the rate of growth in reported cases was already decreasing in Italy (light blue) before these measures.
This does not show that the lockdown was ineffective, either. Evaluating the effectiveness of such measures would require more information. I urge you not to jump to conclusions either way.
IV. General Improvement But A Dreary Tuesday
I have two more charts for you, as an alternative way to visualize the decline in the rate of growth in recent days. The first addresses deaths and the second addresses reported cases.
This chart shows the rate of growth in reported deaths, in four bars from each country, with the oldest dates on top. So for each country, the blue bar shows the average daily rate of growth for March 21-24 (4 days); the orange bar shows the average for March 25-28 (4 days), and the final three bars show the rates of growth for the past three days.
You can see that the general trend was downward in all countries, until March 31. Tuesday was a difficult day for the US, the UK, and the Other Western European nations, with a notable increase in reported deaths.
Thankfully, the news remains quite favorable in Italy and Spain. Remember that they are vastly harder hit than we are — Italy has 17 times more deaths per million than the US, and Spain has 15 times more.
Despite the uptick Tuesday in some countries, the rate of increase in reported deaths has been lower over the past three days, in all of these nations, than it was in the four preceding days.
Here is the same chart for the growth in reported cases. Here the news is better, with significant declines everywhere except France Tuesday.
The very low rate of growth in reported cases in Italy — around 5% or less each day for the past three days — is extremely good news. The growth rate has been under 10% in Spain for three days, as well. This is a good sign that these hardest-hit countries may be turning the corner quite soon.
I expect that a decline in the growth rate in reported cases will lead to a similar decline in the growth rate in deaths, with a lag of perhaps 10-15 days.
There may be a way to test this hypothesis, perhaps with a regression analysis of the growth rate in deaths (the dependent variable) as a function of the growth rate in reported cases (the independent variable) with a selected lag time. It’s getting late, so I’ll consider this Wednesday.
V. Conclusion
I wish that I could tell you that April will be a better month than March. I think that this is possible for Italy and Spain, but only because they had such a terrible March. I expect that April will be a significantly more difficult month than March for the US but hope that the worst will be over by the end of April. There is no guarantee of this.
For some reason, in my consideration of the coronavirus pandemic, I’ve been reminded of two things over the past couple of days. The first is the great speech that Morpheus gave in Matrix Revolutions:
Believe me when I say we have a difficult time ahead of us. But if we are to be prepared for it, we must first shed our fear of it. I stand here before you now truthfully unafraid. Why? Because I believe something you do not? No! I stand here without fear because I remember. I remember that I am here not because of the path that lies before me but because of the path that lies behind me.
The path that lies behind me is the path that lies behind us all. Our friend Bryan Stephens has a great post on this (here). We have faced war and pestilence and economic crisis before, and always emerged stronger.
The second thing that comes to mind is the various chapters in Churchill’s The Second World War dealing with the Battle of the Atlantic. This was the crucial battle for the Western Allies, on which all else depended. But there was no obvious victory in the battle against the U-boats. It was the numbers, and the charts, and the graphs that showed when the tide had turned, when increased Allied effectiveness at sea and in the air started driving down the number of U-boats, and losses declined, and the titanic shipbuilding efforts of the US ultimately made good all of the losses and allowed us to transport the men and material that laid low the Third Reich.
It will happen again. As Morpheus ended his speech — the great Laurence Fishburne in his greatest role delivering his greatest line — “Tonight, let us make them remember. This is Zion, and we are not afraid!”
You can watch it here, if you’re so inclined.
ChiCom delenda est.
Published in Healthcare
At a time like this we put petty things aside and appreciate hard working allies who read these numbers for us every day and are skilled enough to tease out their real meaning. Thanks!
With the US, we have to look at each state or treat NY as an outlier.
I found this video on you tube from the Corbett Report to be illuminating. One of the interesting things is that James Corbett offers up remarkably excellent citations regarding how many legit researchers and mainstream data-gathering scientists, and their often prestigious orgs, who are aghast at the usual over the top totally bogus “COVID Is An Unknown Plague That Will Kill Us All” mis-statistics.
The first half of the broadcast goes step by step through how shabby the numbers out of Italy happen to be. One of the things that is amazing is that no one Corbett refers to from Italy attempted to try to inflate the deadliness of the disease. Various people releasing information to the Italian press and world press tried to explain that the patients who had the worst cases of COVID 19 were very elderly people who were not in good health to begin with. It is hard to beat back a SARS-like infection such as COVID 19 when you are over 80, and battling serious COPD, heart problems or cancer. But that information did not make for the type of headlines that sells the news, or keeps a person glued to their TV’s.
As he concludes his analysis of information he has gathered about Italy, he offers up that the 9 to 10 percent mortality rate in Italy might be as much as 188% wrong!
Corbett states quite calmly that there are more and more statisticians, researchers, doctors and scientists who continue to come out of the wood work to announce that their careful analyses. In doing so they explode so many myths the Lame Stream Media needs to continue to propagate. As we have seen with the “outliers” inside the Global Climate Debate, there are repercussions these truth tellers face almost immediately.
The video has a run time under 22 minutes.
https://youtu.be/bM9aZflBoOU
####
I was trying to find daily stats on normal flu and flu deaths so I could graph it. Could not find anything. However I think the most important chart would be overall flu deaths, testing positive for the flu verses what % are for COVID-19. That is the proper context.
@caroljoy — “Various people releasing information to the Italian press and world press tried to explain that the patients who had the worst cases of COVID 19 were very elderly people who were not in good health to begin with. It is hard to beat back a SARS-like infection such as COVID 19 when you are over 80, and battling serious COPD, heart problems or cancer. But that information did not make for the type of headlines that sells the news, or keeps a person glued to their TV’s.”
The media (and Jerry?) may want to keep younger people scared and cooperative, so they report every possible statistic except the age distribution of fatalities.
I wonder if the high death rate in Italy and elsewhere may be a product of the somewhat casual approach of government monopoly healthcare systems toward treating the seriously ill elderly. “Give them morphine and turn their faces to the wall.”
I hadn’t heard that, and having lived in Canada and lived in Europe, I don’t think that it is necessarily so that the elderly are treated so casually that unneeded amounts of heroin are used to cause the patients an earlier death.
Of course your theory is a possibility.
Let me clarify what I’m referring to.
Here’s former NY Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey:
In Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the pandemic, doctors recently faced the grim arithmetic of 1,000 patients needing ventilators and only 600 available. Italy is rationing ventilators, too, leaving many to die without them. …
Italy has only around one-third as many intensive-care beds per capita as the United States does. Coronavirus patients are being turned away.
https://nypost.com/2020/03/19/we-didnt-have-to-have-ventilator-shortage-leaders-chose-not-to-prep-for-pandemic/
With limited resources, they allocate them to the cases where they are most likely to be successful, which usually means younger patients over older ones.
According to an article in The Sun, in Italy, you get a ventilator at all only if you’re younger than 60.
Using today’s cumulative total from the Johns Hopkins map, NYC had more COVID-19 deaths in March than flu deaths in a typical year. The first death in New York State was reported in mid March, the city is now at 1,139.
Whatever the differences in the diseases may be, flu has a widely used annual vaccine which, while typically around 40% effective, slows the spread and likely reduces how often and how severely ARDS results from flu. Plus flu testing is readily available.
This resembles the AIDS epidemic in that heterosexual cases were over emphasized.
I think other countries and places look something like…
Monaco is ~1,123 per million
Greenland is ~1,214 per million
Liechtenstein is ~1,755 per million
Iceland is ~3,783 per million
San Marino is ~7,078 per million
I’m not trying to keep people scared and cooperative. I’m trying to keep track of what is going on, as factually as possible, because I find the media’s reporting to be hysterical and misleading. I do this mostly for my own personal reasons, but having done so, I share what I find here at Ricochet.
I remain skeptical about the high death rate projections, but information keeps coming in. In the US, COVID-19 is not growing exponentially, but it is growing more substantially than I thought when I first analyzed the issue on March 15.
My time series data does not include demographic information, such as the age of those who died, so I do not report such information.
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/places-america-most-risk-populations-covid-19
I wonder how much the disease has affected death rates: what percentage of the population has died that otherwise would not have, to date?
Do you have this data for any countries, or in general?
From the data you present, there is no way we can know if the number of deaths, which you do give, represents a big, medium, or small impact of this epidemic. (I’m guessing it’s medium so far, but I have no data to support this.)
If the impact is smaller than the media, the academics, and the political class would like it to be in order to maximize the respective benefits of the disease to each of them, then it is understandable why they’ve not yet reported it.
But the data is readily available to the experts, and most Ricocheteers are interested in the truth, not in what the media would, or would not, like us to know.
One per person, same as always.
Thanks, Jerry.
Do you think the information is being kept from the public on purpose? This is my suspicion.
The same thought had occurred to me, though the reasons are not quite the same.
What are you talking about? It is widely reported that the death rate is higher for those above 60 and very high for the elderly. You can find in various places distribution charts in various countries all saying the same thing. This is not some hidden secret.
In dozens of hours of TV coverage I’ve watched, I have not heard anyone give the actual numbers by age.
Except one occasion when Bill Bennett, guesting on a talk show, commented that the average age at death from coronavirus in Italy was 85. I posted this on one of Jerry G’s daily reports, and asked if anyone could verify this, but no one did.
Then I challenged Jerry on this posting, as to why he doesn’t give that kind of data, which is important for understanding why different communities have such different death rates.
He responds, above:
My time series data does not include demographic information, such as the age of those who died, so I do not report such information.
When CNN and MSNBC talking heads accuse Donald Trump of planning to murder the Greatest Generation, this may imply that they have the statistics by age in hand, but don’t want to publish them.
There’s your problem.
Never assume that the news has some inside information that they are hiding. It could just as probably be that they are parroting the Greatest Generation line given that the daily briefings have repeated frequently that people over 60 are at greatest risk simply based on age.
There is a Worldometers page on demographics, but the data is as of February 28.
Good question. Difficult to find answers but today’s Wall St Journal has article on Bergamo province in Italy. Average deaths in Bergamo during March of the past five years was 996. Estimated deaths this March were 5,400, only 2,060 of which were confirmed COVID. Journal found examples of mass deaths in nursing homes which were not counted as COVID because post-mortem testing is not being done because of healthcare system being overwhelmed. Local officials acknowledge COVID deaths much higher than official figures. Article also states:
Mark, this is a good question. I don’t think that it’s very informative to focus on highly selective information, as Gumby Mark did in #21 above. (This is not meant as a criticism of Gumby Mark — his source is probably the media, which tends toward sensationalism, and therefore would be inclined to focus on the worst tiny region in the world.)
I did a quick calculation based on mortality rates, which allowed me to calculate typical monthly deaths for various countries, and then compare that figure to reported COVID-19 deaths in March. I’ll probably expand on this in a separate post today or tomorrow, but here’s the relevant bar chart:
The red is reported COVID-19 deaths in March. The blue is typical monthly deaths by country (not accounting for any seasonal variations).
Jerry – my source is “probably” the media? Did you bother to read the comment? I said it was from the Wall St Journal. Did you bother to read the article itself? I don’t think it is particulary informative to focus on country death rates when what we have, even in Italy, is a series of regional outbreaks. I have no idea whether Bergamo’s situation is more broadly representative of such regions, nor do you.
Mark, sorry. I did read your comment, but in the time gap between reading it, then creating and posting the chart, I didn’t return to it in order to double-check the source of your data.
It is a bit unfair to criticize me for not reading a WSJ article that you didn’t even link. It would be helpful for you to link such things, in general, though for the WSJ, it’s behind a paywall anyway (here).
I agree that neither of us knows whether Bergamo is representative of hard-hit regions, nor do we have detailed information about such regions. We also don’t know whether other regions will suffer the same fate, or not.
The media reporting is typically by country, as is the data (though I’ve also been posting on metro-area data in the US). Sorry that you don’t find it helpful. I think that it is more helpful than focusing on the hardest-hit regions, when we have no idea whether they are representative.
Thanks, Rodin.
The percentages (all from China, note well) are suggestive. Again, there appears to be little or no risk of death among healthy (or even unhealthy?) people under 50, and a many times higher risk at 80+.
However, the percentages are shaky: Coronavirus deaths divided by number of “cases”; i.e., patients with symptoms strong enough to get them tested and diagnosed. If, for example, a larger proportion of the elderly is tested than of other groups, then the death percentages will understate the danger to the elderly, and overstate the danger to other age cohorts.
The chart doesn’t tell us how many died in each age cohort, or the percentage of total deaths accounted for by each age cohort, or the average age at death — though it kind of hints it’s north of 80.
Massachusetts may actually be a representative state for the rest of the country. Only about 17 percent of our population is over 62 (or it may be 60, I forget which it was when I saw the chart yesterday).
Here is the Covid-19 latest statistics for Massachusetts by age and sex. Our population is 6.9 million. New York City’s population is 8.6 million.
Looking at these two places, one can see the power of social distancing and the dangers of high population density.
Remember, the hypothesis is that they don’t want the general public to fully realize Coronavirus is not much of a threat to people under 50. TV is no longer the only source of news for the general public, but it is still a major one.
However, the same information is missing in the conservative articles and postings and podcasts I’ve encountered.
Re-reading my comment I see how you interpreted it that way! Very careless wording on my part, and I apologize.
I did not mean to criticize you in any way. On the contrary, I think you are doing a great job.
I meant to criticize the source on which you rely: the media, the politicians, and the researchers. (Not the researchers who have the info and are using it, but have no outlet or job requirement to publish it. But scientists who are interviewed should try to get the relevant info out and explain why it is relevant, and why raw death rates per capita, without the context of overall deaths plus deaths that would have happened anyway, are misleading)
I was expressing a desire for the info, if you or someone else come across it or can dig it out by searching the data sources. I am not able to find anything.
Interestingly, Massachusetts breaks out cases by age, where younger cohorts actually have higher numbers, but lump all deaths together.
However, the chart of the 33 dead yesterday includes the age cohort of each, so I tallied them myself:
00-29 ………. 0
30-39 ………. 1
40-49 ………. 0
50-59 ………. 2
60-69 ………. 3
70-79 ………. 7
80-89 ……… 12
90-99 ………. 7
100+ ……….. 1
This is so typical of the rubbish data we get from government and the media. I complained about it above. Precise detailed answers to some question they decided to ask, but very few questions chosen that are what people need to know the answers to.