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Coronavirus Update 5-2: All Quiet on the COVID Front
I have a COVID-19 update for you, based on reported death data through yesterday (May 2, 2020). The daily rate of increase in total reported COVID-19 deaths is now under 3% for the US and all of the major nations of Western Europe, down to and including little Luxembourg. Daily reported deaths continue at a relatively low, but significant, level throughout the West, at an average of about 2,000 per day in both the US and Western Europe (the exact figures are 1,802/day in the US and 2,095 in Western Europe, for the past week).
I. Reported Death Data
As usual, my data source is Johns Hopkins (here). On to the graphs.
The first two graphs show total cumulative reported COVID-19 deaths, per 100,000 population. The first graph shows the larger countries, plus Belgium (the hardest-hit country in this sample); the second graph shows the smaller countries, with Italy for comparison.
Here, you can see that the UK has surpassed France slightly in deaths per capita. While the US has the highest total number of deaths, due to a vastly larger population, the per capita number is much lower than most other nations. Germany remains quite fortunate for reasons that are unclear.
Next, the same data in logarithmic scale. Remember that this scale displays whether growth is “exponential,” as exponential growth yields a straight line in logarithmic scale. I started this whole graphing project to rebut the claim that COVID-19 was growing exponentially, which was erroneous and hysterical nonsense even at the time.
Of course, people rarely concede that they were wrong, so I expect that the response of the catastrophizers will be that the damaging, and sometimes draconian, house arrest of much of the population is the only thing that saved us from exponential ruin. Pay no attention to the fact that the same non-exponential pattern is apparent in every country, regardless of their policy response.
My suspicion is that when the analysis is finally done, probably in a year or so, we will see that the death rate is largely dependent on two things: (1) the extent to which populations live in relatively crowded cities, especially cities with widespread use of public transportation systems, and (2) the degree of social and physical isolation of the elderly population. These are only hypotheses at present.
The next graph shows the precipitous decline in the growth rate of cumulative reported cases, using a three-day average for data smoothing purposes. Note that this graph starts later than the others — March 25 instead of March 1 — because the early data was very chaotic.
You can see that the rate of increase is now below 3% daily in all countries and regions, and generally continues to trend downward.
II. Jerry’s Commentary
I have been quite skeptical about the claim that various lockdown, house arrest, or other social distancing policies have caused the enormous reduction in the growth rate of reported deaths demonstrated above. I do not dispute, in principle, that such measures have slowed the spread of COVID-19. What we do not know is the extent to which the reduction has been caused by policy, and the extent to which the reduction would have occurred anyway.
I am actually not particularly optimistic about the future progress of this disease over the next 3-6 months. The policy response is causing almost incalculable economic damage, and enormous interference to daily life. I do not think that this disease has run its course. Not nearly. If and when we open things up, there will be an increase in the rate of transmission, and then an increase in the number of deaths. This is unavoidable. Even draconian lockdown policies only slow the spread. They don’t stop it.
The catastrophizers dismiss these concerns as heartless concern over money, or focus on trivial things — like people dying alone, cut off from their loved ones; the elderly who no longer get to see their children or grandchildren; the ruin of the financial future of tens of millions of hard-working people; all of the high school kids who won’t get a senior prom or a graduation; the churches and synagogues shut down. Even funerals are canceled.
Those things aren’t trivial. That is life.
But the catastrophizers don’t care. I am getting very frustrated and angry at them. If I’m not willing to live in some plastic-bubble pod, then I’m a murderer.
They are wrong. Some of you are in this camp. It is time to man up, and admit that you were wrong. You want to live in fear? Fine. Hide in your house. Quarantine yourself. Stop insisting that the rest of us be quarantined.
Do you know what? It’s like the darned flu. It’s several times more deadly than the flus in living memory, but probably only by a factor of between 2 and 5. It’s a relatively minor risk, and we simply need to face it and get on with life.
Many of you are frustrated at our politicians. The problem is not really the politicians. The problem is the overprotective mother attitude present in so much of the population, men and women alike. The problem is the “people will die” argument and the accusation that anyone bravely going about life as usual — and any politician willing to let them do so — is a murderer.
There is an irony about this disease because it is a respiratory disease. Quite literally, it is spread by breathing. So the coronaphobes demand that we not be allowed to breathe free.
My inclination is to respond with something that is not COC-compliant. Instead, I will say that I dissent. I will not say that I dissent respectfully.
ChiCom delenda est.
Published in Healthcare
Nope. Not I.
I would not, either.
Do you really think this is about, “accepting hundreds of thousands of deaths so we can go to bars and the NCAA tournament”?
I’ve lived in my working class neighborhood just outside Philly for 35 years and I’ve never seen devastation like this. It’s been deteriorating slowly for the past 20 years. When Trump’s economy began to take off, we had an influx of young families buying homes. Little shops that have been empty for 3-4 decades started to spring to life with little bakeries, small Asian and Mexican restaurants along with other small business.
Now we have families that will lose their homes, who lie awake every night in anguish, wondering how they will will feed their families, where they’ll find shelter when they’re evicted and who understand that good, new opportunities will likely be unavailable for many years.
Our small businesses will be closed forever. These people put everything on the line and now everything is gone, including their dreams. Our neighborhoods will will likely not recover in my lifetime.
I’m tired of being accused of heartlessness for wanting us to reopen as soon as possible or of wanting people to die. Can people who are not experiencing an existential financial crisis come out of their bubbles and see that people die in all kinds of ways. Ricochet is a unique places where it seems most of us do not live paycheck-to-paycheck. Have we lost our ability to recognize and empathize with the suffering of so many?
Again, I refer to my comment #16: what’s the difference between opening up now vs. opening 6 weeks from now without a cure or a vaccine?
Signed,
Jeannebodine, That Verbose One
I see you figured out a way to make your point @jeannebodine.
very little difference IF you assume no gains in medical knowledge, no successful vaccine or antiviral development and no increase in healthcare capacity in the interim. If any of those occur, than there are substantial gains to be made by not fully reopening up. Yes there is a cost-but many here assume all the economic fallout is due to the “lockdown” – while much of it would have occurred b/c of the public’s response to to pandemic. Look, many restaurants and small businesses have narrow profit margins & if just those with comorbidities or over 65 quit coming-than a lot of those enterprises will fail. Look at Sweden- no lockdown yet their economy is suffering about as much as the rest of the EU (and their death rate is significantly higher than Norway & Denmark). Conservatives believe in the capacity of individuals to innovate and to learn from HISTORY. We need some history(time) on our side- so we need open up prudently-phased & monitored.
@cdor, notice I said insightful and erudite (based on my inflated sense of self) but I never said succinct.😗
So you’re expecting successful vaccines and antivirals in the next 6 weeks? And what do you mean, there may be an increase in healthcare capacity in the interim? We’re tearing down field hospitals and most hospitals across the country are empty because elective surgeries and others services deemed “non-essential” have been cancelled for weeks.
I don’t assume all losses occurred as a result of the lock down but is that any justification for continuing it?
So we need to develop “HISTORY” and since conservatives value history, it would be wrong to open up without it? History is the study of past events, including memories, discoveries, collections, data, etc. and interpreting this to objectively (ha!) determine patterns of cause and effect.
Should I knock at my next door neighbor’s door and tell them we’re waiting for history to unfold even though any understanding of the “history” of this virus developed over such a short period of time should be called “Stunted History”, similar to Fractured Fairy Tales.
Look, I’m not trying to be sarcastic but I get like this when I’m frustrated. I’m viewing this situation through the eyes of my neighbors and members of my community who desperately need some practical hope and solutions to keep them from even more despair.
But what if the public’s response to COVID has been driven by serious overstatement of the risk on the part of the media, the politicians, and you too MiMac (in a small way)? This is actually the point of those of us who analogize COVID-19 to the flu, or other risks like traffic accidents, which we accept as a matter of course. I understand that the risk of COVID is higher than the flu, but it remains quite small.
In your #22, you wrote:
There are two problems with this. The first is moving the goalposts. We were sold a 15 day lockdown. That was, what, about 8 weeks ago? A 9-24 month lockdown seems absolutely insane to me, the sort of thing to make the Great Depression look like a walk in the park.
The second problem is the hypothetical nature of the benefits you propose. No one knows the prospect of developing a vaccine, or better treatment, over the next 9-24 months.
I think that if the vast majority of people understood the actual risk, they would go about their business, largely as usual. This is what I am doing. One would think that the government would be providing reassurance to the population, not stoking the unwarranted fear and hysteria. You know, Londoners managed to go about their business during the Blitz.
Jerry& Jeanne-
1)note-I never said keep the lockdowns-I said reopen in a phased manner & do not expect to return to “normal” in the short term. The lockdowns goal was to “flatten the curve” and buy time. No knowledgeable authority thought a 15 day lockdown would work-especially since the time from exposure to death from COVID-19 is about 23 days-so we wouldn’t know if the lockdown was working for 3+ weeks ( death is followed because death is easier to track-particularly in a pandemic with many asymptomatic people). We still need to buy time by a phased reopening-not all at once & not one size fits all (to quote myself form above).
2) we have added capacity -both the # of ICU beds & ventilators, PPE stocks etc have significantly increased. There is no doubt of this- many hospitals now have real respirators (not the N95 facemask-real masks that fit much better). So we are better prepared now than 6 weeks ago b/c of the steps taken. One of the reasons for cancelling elective surgery was b/c it would use some of the scarce PPE-now with added stores we can go ahead(one of the little discussed problems was the Obama-Biden administration did not replete the national PPE stock after the H1N1 scare). Not to mention nosocomial spread is a concern-in Wuhan many of the early patients got it when visiting the hospital (a side effect of the Chinese refusing to acknowledge they had an epidemic in place).
3) The government should not be giving assurances except if it is warranted-we need their best guesstimate of the future. We will not go back to normal even with a complete reopening-large gatherings will be a problem. What medium to large employer isn’t going to take steps to limit his liability? Just a thought experiment- we reopen & you get COVID-but have few symptoms-YOU WILL BE OUT OF WORK 2+ WEEKS. Until we get better therapies we will not get back to normal-even if we do we have lost business and jobs that won’t be back right away (I know several MDS who are at risk & therefore retired-we could use them). This isn’t fear mongering- but bad policies will not help it either. Their is a reasonable chance we get a vaccine or anti-viral therapy (better than remdesivir) in the next 9 months- I certainly hope & pray that we do. The economy isn’t the most important thing-but without it we can’t do any of the REALLY important things we want to (have a good meal with friends in a restaurant, go to a game/concert, go to church, go on vacation).
MiMac, I appreciate your thoughtful responses. I think that we differ principally on two issues.
First, I think that the economic consequences of not getting back to normal, ASAP, will be catastrophic. Great Depression level catastrophic. I think that such a result would be worse than, say, 1.0-1.5 million deaths in the short term, most of which cannot be prevented in any event (though I agree with you that some might be prevented). I don’t think that the sort of gradual, phased re-opening that you prefer will avoid this, though it will be less bad than continuing the lockdowns.
Second, I think that the risk of COVID-19 to the vast majority of the population is negligible. Not zero, but not the sort of thing that would prevent me from living a normal life. By “vast majority,” I mean just about everyone under 65, and probably most healthy older folks, too.
If we re-open, I’m not even sure that we should quarantine people who get COVID-19. If our goal is herd immunity, and the risk is very low for most people, then perhaps they should go about their business, too — with obvious exceptions for people who work in nursing homes and the like.
I like your thought experiment. This sounds like a great deal to me, and probably to the roughly 30 million people currently out of work — and probably vastly more than that who are underemployed at present. The result of your proposal seems to be that they will be out of work indefinitely.
I should make it clear that COVID is not affecting me much, personally. I’m still working. Even if I got the disease, and if I couldn’t come to the office, I could still work remotely for a couple of weeks. Obviously, if I had a really bad case — very unlikely — I wouldn’t be able to work, but the risk of that seems very, very low. I actually may have already had the disease, as I was sick for a few days in late March.