The World-O-Meter Thread

[Elixir]

Wanted a place to put screen shots, leaving a timeline for how this thing is unfolding.
Worldometers has a metric shit ton of information, updated constantly. I intend to post this shot, as an overview of the US vs. the runners up.
I'll try to do this toward the end of the day, GMT - which is the "day" that they use.



New records:
* First day with over 20k new cases in the US.
* Beating the first runner up in new cases by over 60%
* 210 more US deaths than yesterday, a record 1-day increase
* First day in double digits for deaths per million population - but don't celebrate too much; we have 10, Italy has 192. Which might portend some 200,000 new cases per day when we reach the point where they are.

One could say that a bright spot is that less than 1% of US cases has proved fatal - so far. But more than 94% of all US cases are still listed as "active". The number dead (3156) is more than 64 percent of all cases that have been "resolved" (8662).

It's a shocking picture that runs contrary to the predictions and guarantees of our laughing stock, but still early in the process. Trump's failure to take leadership in any regard, his elevation of his own image and the short term economy as priorities combined with his gutting of the agencies that would have handled the situation, could push the peak back by weeks or even months, and raise that peak to eye-popping heights.

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

I've been following as well. It's hard to know how meaningful the number of confirmed cases stat is country to country, though it does show a sense of increase within each country. I would think the deaths (and deaths/1m population) are more consistently recorded across nations.

For the most part I find myself looking at Italy and Spain due to how hard they have both been hit, then Canada as my home country and the US as our immediate neighbour. It's difficult to understand how Italy and Spain are going to stem the tide at this point. Right now in Canada we have adequate resources to treat people. A few of our one day spikes in deaths were due to old folks homes getting hit hard. But the number of severe cases per day will almost certainly keep climbing. Because our population is spread so strangely across such a large landmass, there is going to be very inconsistent capacity to handle an increasing number of hospitalizations.

A minor point of interest, but that spreadsheet is not well suited to regions with less than 1 million people. San Marino is listed with 26 deaths, but 766/1m pop. Not mathematically incorrect, but kind of misleading.

 

[Elixir]

Good point about smaller nations. Variable reporting practices also skew the picture. Then there's my bad math; 3156 is obviously not 64% of 8662, it's the inverse (36%).

 

[seanie]

Some useful sites.

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

https://david-rossell.shinyapps.io/covidapp/

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

 

[Elixir]

3-31



Notes:
* New record number of US and World deaths...
* Record number of new US and World cases ...
* Tomorrow is April:

... by April we will be laughing going,
"Remember how everyone panicked over the coronavirus
because the media started fear mongering?"

Moral: Don't listen to Trump or to anyone who listens to Trump

 

[Derec]

New records:
* First day with over 20k new cases in the US.
* Beating the first runner up in new cases by over 60%

You can't compare raw numbers like that. USA has a large population.
Based on numbers from the screen shot in your OP, Italy (population 60.5 million) still has slightly more new cases per capita than US even though their epidemic is farther gone and flattening. Spain (pop. 46.7 million) has significantly more new cases per capita.

* 210 more US deaths than yesterday, a record 1-day increase

Yes, the daily cases and deaths are increasing, but the rate of increase is slowing. It's not rising exponentially. That shows that the social distancing measures are starting to work. That is heartening.

* First day in double digits for deaths per million population - but don't celebrate too much; we have 10, Italy has 192. Which might portend some 200,000 new cases per day when we reach the point where they are.

Italy is not destiny. We have been about 2 weeks behind Italy, but two weeks ago Italy was already a major clusterfuck. There is no reason to assume we will mirror Italy. Or Spain.
Speaking of Italy, they seem to have peaked. At last they are getting some handle on the situation, even though they went through a lot of pain to get there.

One could say that a bright spot is that less than 1% of US cases has proved fatal - so far. But more than 94% of all US cases are still listed as "active". The number dead (3156) is more than 64 percent of all cases that have been "resolved" (8662).

It takes time for the cases to completely resolve themselves. That said, in a few weeks we should have >50k healed cases. That's a lot of people we can take antibodies from, which seems to be our best hope for effective treatment and prophylaxis until a vaccine is ready, which won't be this year unfortunately.

It's a shocking picture that runs contrary to the predictions and guarantees of our laughing stock, but still early in the process. Trump's failure to take leadership in any regard, his elevation of his own image and the short term economy as priorities combined with his gutting of the agencies that would have handled the situation, could push the peak back by weeks or even months, and raise that peak to eye-popping heights.

"Pushing the peak back" means flattening the curve, i.e. a lower peak. High peak would occur with an early peak. Also, Trump is no longer talking about opening the country back up soon. So maybe he is learning.

 

[Jokodo]

You can't compare raw numbers like that. USA has a large population.
Based on numbers from the screen shot in your OP, Italy (population 60.5 million) still has slightly more new cases per capita than US even though their epidemic is farther gone and flattening. Spain (pop. 46.7 million) has significantly more new cases per capita.



Yes, the daily cases and deaths are increasing, but the rate of increase is slowing. It's not rising exponentially. That shows that the social distancing measures are starting to work. That is heartening.
View attachment 26848
View attachment 26847

I laud your optimism, but ignoring the significant fluctuation, the three day average of deaths has doubled in four days (March 29-30 / March 25-27 = 2.005). The case count curve *appears* to be flattening but that might as well be a saturation effect due limits on the number of tests that can be conducted - New York's rate of positive tests (more than a third, 75k confirmed cases out of 200k tests conducted) certainly indicates a very high number of unrecorded cases.

 

[Jokodo]

You can't compare raw numbers like that. USA has a large population.
Based on numbers from the screen shot in your OP, Italy (population 60.5 million) still has slightly more new cases per capita than US even though their epidemic is farther gone and flattening.

The US has a large population indeed, but the cases aren't uniformly spread. New York State (just under 20 million population) already has more confirmed cases than Hubei province (60 million) in China, and almost twice as many as Lombardy in Italy (10 million, so a very similar rate). Deaths are lagging 2-3 weeks behind because people don't drop dead as soon as they're infected, but yesterday New York already recorded just shy of 400 deaths in a day. I predict a peak mid-Month of 2-3000 deaths per day and possibly more for New York alone - and by that time, other parts of the country may have become emerging hotspots.

I hope I'm wrong though.

 

[ruby sparks]

General downward trend for new cases in Italy.

Up until end of yesterday.

It would be encouraging if today's numbers fell below 4k.

 

[Elixir]

You can't compare raw numbers like that. USA has a large population.

That's why I posted the whole spreadsheet Derec. We can definitely start patting ourselves on the back as Trump would like, since he has single-handedly kept our infection rate down to less than a third of Italy's (570/m vs 1750/m), and the death rate is only 12/m vs 206/m for Italy. So go dance in the street - those are numbers that every "I'm not a Trumpsucker" should be celebrating.

But do it soon, Derec, because in a few weeks we will be where Italy is now in terms of those numbers. Hopefully (for you, Trump et al) Italy will be in even worse shape by then so you can continue to point to them and sing the praises of the fed's management of the crisis.

Seriously dude - you do yourself no favors by sounding like Half-Whatever.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

USA has more people, Europe has a higher population density.

In a week, the US will definitely have more than 10,000 deaths, and possibly over 15,000 deaths. It is possible that in 7 days, we'll be over half a million confirmed cases.

 

[Jokodo]

USA has more people, Europe has a higher population density.

Not a higher population density than New York City. Also, Europe has more than twice the population of the US. The EU alone (which doesn't cover all of Europe) has over 500M. What's true is that the USA has more people than any single European country.

New York state has 19.5m population and a peacetime death rate of 0.8% per year. By my math, that works out as about 430 deaths on an average day. Yesterday, New York recorded 372 COVID-19 deaths, most of them in NYC. We can safely assume that the overall death rate has already at least doubled due to COVID-19 there, and the numbers are still rising relentlessly.

I'm afraid when New York peaks, Wuhan and Milan during their respective peaks will look like promising destinations for a weekend trip. Scary.

 

[Elixir]

What's wrong with this picture? (It's representing Italy)



In 44% of cases that have had an outcome, the outcome was death. But only 5% of active cases are "critical".
What does this mean? That they have ramped up testing by a zillion percent? That there is a VERY long lag between diagnosis and an outcome? That a huge percentage of cases eventually become critical? Or are these stats totally meaningless due to limited testing?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It means that all statistics aren't exactly linear and should be looked at and reviewed carefully.

 

[Jokodo]

What's wrong with this picture? (It's representing Italy)

View attachment 26859

In 44% of cases that have had an outcome, the outcome was death. But only 5% of active cases are "critical".
What does this mean? That they have ramped up testing by a zillion percent? That there is a VERY long lag between diagnosis and an outcome? That a huge percentage of cases eventually become critical? Or are these stats totally meaningless due to limited testing?

- Cases can start with mild symptoms and deteriorate a week or two in, sometimes later
- "mild" is every one not in intensive care, even those who might be better if with.
- testing probably too

 

[funinspace]

Another interesting site with trend projections by the state:
https://covid19.healthdata.org/

Who they are:

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent population health research center at UW Medicine, part of the University of Washington, that provides rigorous and comparable measurement of the world's most important health problems and evaluates the strategies used to address them. IHME makes this information freely available so that policymakers have the evidence they need to make informed decisions about how to allocate resources to best improve population health.[USER][/USER]

Another interesting thingy.
https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/map-suggests-tb-vaccine-may-help-prevent-covid-19/

The map below from the medical journal Plos Medicine displays BCG vaccination policy by country. Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine is a vaccine primarily used against tuberculosis. Yellow: The country now has a universal BCG vaccination program. Blue: The country used to recommend BCG vaccination for everyone, but now does not. Red: The country never had a universal BCG vaccination program.
<snip>
“Yes,” my friend observes, “Iran is yellow – and it’s been hit very hard by the pandemic – but BCG vaccinations started there in 1984, which wouldn’t have been in time to protect the elderly Iranians who have succumbed to the disease.”
<snip>
The friend who started all this with his post emphasizes that “evidence about BCG is still preliminary, scanty, untested, etc. Correlation does not equal causation, and these country comparisons may all be one huge coincidence.

 

[Derec]

I laud your optimism,

Thanks, I guess.

but ignoring the significant fluctuation, the three day average of deaths has doubled in four days (March 29-30 / March 25-27 = 2.005).

And if you compare March 25-27 average with 4 days earlier (March 21-23), you get a ratio of 3.05. Which means a significant slowdown between these adjacent 4 day periods.

The case count curve *appears* to be flattening but that might as well be a saturation effect due limits on the number of tests that can be conducted - New York's rate of positive tests (more than a third, 75k confirmed cases out of 200k tests conducted) certainly indicates a very high number of unrecorded cases.

A high number of unrecorded cases (esp. asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic ones) but I see no reason to assume that the capture rate is decreasing.

 

[Derec]

The US has a large population indeed, but the cases aren't uniformly spread.

That is indeed true, but it's also the case everywhere.

New York State (just under 20 million population) already has more confirmed cases than Hubei province (60 million) in China,

There is a high likelihood China is lying about their numbers.

and almost twice as many as Lombardy in Italy (10 million, so a very similar rate).

And yet NY is far from the clusterfuck that Lombardy has been for weeks. That is a good sign.

Deaths are lagging 2-3 weeks behind because people don't drop dead as soon as they're infected, but yesterday New York already recorded just shy of 400 deaths in a day.

Yes, deaths lag new cases. But new case data shows that social distancing is working. Warmer weather also likely slows down spread somewhat, but NY has had a kind of cold March.

I predict a peak mid-Month of 2-3000 deaths per day and possibly more for New York alone - and by that time, other parts of the country may have become emerging hotspots.

372 recorded deaths in NY yesterday. 3000 is then about 3 doublings from yesterday. Your high end would require a doubling every 5 days. I too hope you are wrong and that the doubling time keeps getting longer and longer.
That said, it is pretty inevitable that new hotspots will emerge. But hopefully slowly enough for us to keep a handle on it.

 

[krypton iodine sulfur]

What's wrong with this picture? (It's representing Italy)

View attachment 26859

In 44% of cases that have had an outcome, the outcome was death. But only 5% of active cases are "critical".
What does this mean? That they have ramped up testing by a zillion percent? That there is a VERY long lag between diagnosis and an outcome? That a huge percentage of cases eventually become critical? Or are these stats totally meaningless due to limited testing?

Fatalities may close cases faster than recoveries/ discharges on average.

 

[Derec]

That's why I posted the whole spreadsheet Derec.

It's not about the whole spreadsheet but about converting the numbers to per capita numbers.

We can definitely start patting ourselves on the back as Trump would like, since he has single-handedly kept our infection rate down to less than a third of Italy's (570/m vs 1750/m), and the death rate is only 12/m vs 206/m for Italy. So go dance in the street - those are numbers that every "I'm not a Trumpsucker" should be celebrating.

We indeed have decent numbers - despite Trump's mismanagement. That is cause for optimism, but we are still not out of the woods. Premature end to social distancing would cause numbers to spike.

But do it soon, Derec, because in a few weeks we will be where Italy is now in terms of those numbers.

Doubtful, unless we do something really stupid and end social distancing. Which even Trump backed away from.

Hopefully (for you, Trump et al) Italy will be in even worse shape by then so you can continue to point to them and sing the praises of the fed's management of the crisis.

Actually Italy is, finally, turning a corner. They still have a very high death rate but the daily death numbers are not increasing much and new cases are going down. I hope that in two weeks Italy can get their daily death count below 100.

Could you quote where I sang the praises to "fed's management of the crisis"?

Seriously dude - you do yourself no favors by sounding like Half-Whatever.

Since I never said that this thing will be over by April, I definitely do not sound like him.
Just because I don't subscribe to "we are all doomed" chicken little shit does not mean I am downplaying the seriousness of the situation.