Coronavirus Numbers

[RealAvalon]

As @BSR noted, even allowing for generalised issues with counting there is a disparity between countries on what is counted. Some, like France, are playing catchup with some groups that they have recognised they missed. Some countries, like China, appear to be deliberately obscuring the extent of the casualty rate they face. These disparities make comparison between countries problematic and a lot of the time running a league table of infection rates is not all that helpful. Despite this, the figures for individual countries are useful as long as the criteria that are used are consistent over time (or when changes to methodology are noted and trends are adjusted for them). They provide an indication of how the pandemic is progressing in each country individually, and that is important in evaluating the precautions that each is taking. It's all part of a wider understanding of statistics, that you need understand how they are derived and what they are and are not useful for. In the case of COVID-19 their greatest value is to explain trends not to make comparisons between countries.

The fewer people tested, the lower the number of cases. Screw science and medicine. To be blunt about 'some' countries.

[RealAvalon]

The comparison between NYC and Austria is not logical: the fact that they have about the same population ignores the more important fact that the population density in Austria is 276 per square mile, while the population density in NYC is 28,700 per square mile.

That isn't a logical comparison to make. Austria and New York State. Or Vienna and New York City. But Austria and New York City - apples and oranges.

[jjkrkwood]

Morgue trucks in NYC. It's serious.

 

Unclaimed bodies are being transported to Harts Island up in the Bronx for burial in mass graves...… Terribly SAD... R.I.P...

[jjkrkwood]

91 recovered people in South Korea became RE-infected and tested positive again... Too many unknowns that are becoming known make this a totally unpredictable situation …. If we are too quick to loosen restrictions and force a "back to normal" culture it may really backfire and become something we cant handle or Recover from.

[RealAvalon]

Unclaimed bodies are being transported to Harts Island up in the Bronx for burial in mass graves...… Terribly SAD... R.I.P...

Wow. Seriously? Mass graves? Let that just sink in.

Have 'mass graves' appeared anywhere else in western democracies other than the USA?

Honest question. Perhaps they have. I just haven't heard of them.

Edited April 13, 2020 by RealAvalon

[BSR]

Wow. Seriously? Mass graves? Let that just sink in.

Have 'mass graves' appeared anywhere else in the developed world other than the USA?

Honest question. Perhaps they have. I just haven't heard of them.

 

Probably in China & Iran, but you never know given the regimes in the two nations.

[+ tassojunior]

Wow. Seriously? Mass graves? Let that just sink in.

Have 'mass graves' appeared anywhere else in western democracies other than the USA?

Honest question. Perhaps they have. I just haven't heard of them.

Unclaimed bodies are either buried by the local government or cremated. Since most people are cremated now they should move to cremation.

[+ tassojunior]

Great moving graph showing deaths per population.

 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-million-7-day-average?country=FRA+ITA+PRT+RUS+KOR+ESP+GBR+USA

[+ azdr0710]

Great moving graph showing deaths per population.

 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-million-7-day-average?country=FRA+ITA+PRT+RUS+KOR+ESP+GBR+USA

 

fascinating....thanks.......slowly scrolling the graph continuously is very revealing.....

[+ Charlie]

Unclaimed bodies are either buried by the local government or cremated. Since most people are cremated now they should move to cremation.

Once they have been cremated, there is no possibility of ever identifying them if someone should step forward looking for them.

[RealAvalon]

Great moving graph showing deaths per population.

 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-million-7-day-average?country=FRA+ITA+PRT+RUS+KOR+ESP+GBR+USA

Graphs are hard to put too many lines on, so it limits some important comparisons.

By this graph the USA has 5,380 deaths on April 13th. Canada had 63 total deaths on the same day. The per capita death toll in the USA is nine times what it is in Canada, even though they share similar demographics and economy.

And this even though a much higher percentage of Canadians hold passports than USA citizens, and travel more extensively around the world.

Edited April 14, 2020 by RealAvalon

[LivingnLA]

Probably in China & Iran, but you never know given the regimes in the two nations.

 

I wouldn't trust the Daily Squib, the link under China. It's a satire site. As they themselves admit, there is some truth in what they write, but they intentionally use satire to make their points. Satire can be non-fiction but is usually fiction. It's interesting to read, but not wise to trust as a source of factual information. To make matters worse, that article is based on articles from the Daily Mail and they have a terrible track record. They regularly make things up.

 

We knew about Iran back in March because of satellites and journalism. The regime matters in the USA too, which is why the majority of Americans do not know of the many mass graves our society has created over the centuries, including the one in NYC for unclaimed poor dying right now from COVID-19. That's why we have journalism and why dictators and dictator wannabes around the world attack journalists. This is as close to politics as we should get, otherwise this helpful thread will be relegated to the politics forum.

Edited April 18, 2020 by LivingnLA

[+ bigjoey]

Imagine the admission that China’s numbers are now admittedly off by 50%???

https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-coronavirus-wuhan-death-toll-increase-50-deny-cover-up-20200417-tfhbtmavwrcqdallmebpkemlse-story.html

 

At best, all of these numbers are estimates as the criteria as to how things are counted differs and at best show the direction of the spread of the virus and resulting deaths.

 

As I have warned all along, do not trust numbers from China. There has always been political pressure for people to produce favorable numbers in every area. (This is a feature of Communist dictatorships; the Wall Street Journal just had a story about Cuban doctors who defected; they were told to make up patient names and then patient recoveries in their reports?.)

[CuriousByNature]

I havent had a chance to read through all the posts, so this may have been mentioned already. Given that different countries (and even states and provinces within the same country) have different rates of testing which might suggest different rates of infection, I've been looking at the number of hospitalizations rather than the number of infections. In parts of Canada, particularly Quebec, the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths are quite high compared to other regions.

 

My relatives in BC noted there are about 120 people hospitalized in a province of 5 million inhabitants, and less than half of those are in ICU. Something like 75 deaths in BC, while about 5 times that number in Quebec, even though Quebec has less than 2 times BC's population.

 

Since early March, people in BC have had almost all elective emergency surgeries cancelled (including my uncle's knee replacement) in order to free up beds. I understand over 4000 beds were made available in case of a worst case scenario. Thankfully for them, it looks like the curve has flattened and may have begun to bend downwards.

 

Central Canada isnt there yet... but it certainly could be worse.

[+ stevenkesslar]

Great moving graph showing deaths per population.

 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-per-million-7-day-average?country=FRA+ITA+PRT+RUS+KOR+ESP+GBR+USA

 

Graphs are hard to put too many lines on, so it limits some important comparisons.

By this graph the USA has 5,380 deaths on April 13th. Canada had 63 total deaths on the same day. The per capita death toll in the USA is nine times what it is in Canada, even though they share similar demographics and economy.

And this even though a much higher percentage of Canadians hold passports than USA citizens, and travel more extensively around the world.

 

And ................ it gets worse.

 

One of the many things Dr. Birx says that makes sense is that reopening should be tied to 14 days of continuous reduction in new infections. I thinks she sees that as a minimum standard, or a threshold. So by that standard Spain and Italy have been mostly going down for a few weeks. The US has not gone down for even one day, at least based on a rolling average.

 

The next standard she set is availability of testing and contact tracers adequate to the job at hand. On that one, absolute numbers are critical - not percentages or cases per million. One rule of thumb I've read about countries that have done it the best are one contact tracer can handle two cases. I'm not sure if that means two per day, or just two. In theory, every single infected person could require lots of contact tracing. But I'll go with a contact tracer being able to handle the tracing for two new cases per day. So at the rate of 30,000 new cases per day, we need 15,000 contact tracers. I very much doubt we have that, or anything close to it. Hong Kong and New Zealand have it much easier, since their new cases per day is a single digit.

 

So we have 30,000 new cases a day, the Daily Death trend is still going up, and we are talking about reopening.

 

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3gs4cqw0h1rqfhi2o1_400.gif

 

While there is some evidence that new infections may have peaked in places like New York, in other areas - like South Dakota - we are just getting started, basically. The virus is now in massive exponential growth mode there. It's feeding frenzy time, basically.

 

With 1 million people rather than 20 million people in South Dakota, there are obviously 95 % less infection opportunities. But seems like 1 million sets of lungs is really good feed for COVID-19, regardless. The virus can go a long way on those 1 million lungs alone. Granted, a bunch of those lungs belong to people who will be dead soon. So that kind of fucks things up for the virus a bit. But it's not that hard for COVID-19 to skip over the border to North Dakota, really. Person per person, those North Dakota lungs are just as good as far as virus feed goes. Those workers in meat processing plants are ending up in hospitals. So that's a bit of a drag for COVID-19, too. But as long as things stay pretty much open, COVID-19 can find its way around pretty good. So I'm sure the virus will do just fine.

 

Add all this to the fact that the US hasn't even gotten to half the rate where Italy or Spain peaked, and things could get a lot worse here. What ultimately created the peak in Italy and Spain was a draconian and pretty harshly enforced lockdown. We haven't really had that. Which is why the rolling average of deaths in the US has kept growing every day. Running out of lungs to feed on could slow the virus down significantly. But there's really no danger of that yet. So I don't see how reopening makes the rolling Daily Death average go down. Maybe the idea is that we'll be the poster child for how you simply limit the increase in deaths every day so that the hospital system can more or less handle it.

 

That's actually a great plan for the virus, since it makes sure it is very well fed with fresh lungs for the next year or two.

 

The other problem is that our numbers in the US are as untrustworthy as China's. In the case of the US, it's because of two things. Some people die that are never tested for COVID-19. And a lot of people die at home of COVID-19, because there is no room in a hospital to go die.

 

So maybe what we need to figure out in the next month or two is how to get that rate up to a manageable limit. Like maybe instead of 7 we can handle 10 or 20 daily deaths per million, like Italy or Spain, without disrupting the stock market too much. And then there's that whole dying at home thing that has to be factored in, too. That said, it probably all works out to 6000 or so deaths every day. That's like two 9/11's. I guess that's not that bad.

 

There is good news, so I'd say we should focus on that. The Dow is back up to almost 25,000. Woo hoo!

Edited April 18, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[RealAvalon]

I havent had a chance to read through all the posts, so this may have been mentioned already. Given that different countries (and even states and provinces within the same country) have different rates of testing which might suggest different rates of infection, I've been looking at the number of hospitalizations rather than the number of infections. In parts of Canada, particularly Quebec, the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths are quite high compared to other regions.

 

My relatives in BC noted there are about 120 people hospitalized in a province of 5 million inhabitants, and less than half of those are in ICU. Something like 75 deaths in BC, while about 5 times that number in Quebec, even though Quebec has less than 2 times BC's population.

 

Since early March, people in BC have had almost all elective emergency surgeries cancelled (including my uncle's knee replacement) in order to free up beds. I understand over 4000 beds were made available in case of a worst case scenario. Thankfully for them, it looks like the curve has flattened and may have begun to bend downwards.

 

Central Canada isnt there yet... but it certainly could be worse.

One of our very smart Chief Health Officers or Ministers of Health quoted Churchill today saying: "luck favours the prepared." One of the differences between BC and Quebec was the timing of the school Spring Break within the infection cycle of the virus - it was nothing but luck. In BC the Spring break was later than in Quebec. One of the results, there was a lot of travel to France from Quebec during the earlier school break, just as the virus cycle was cresting in France. This probably led to a higher infection rate in Quebec than in BC.

Edited April 18, 2020 by RealAvalon

[CuriousByNature]

One of our very smart Chief Health Officers or Ministers of Health quoted Churchill today saying: "luck favours the prepared." One of the differences between BC and Quebec was the timing of the school Spring Break within the infection cycle of the virus - it was nothing but luck. In BC the Spring break was later than in Quebec. One of the results was there was a lot of travel to France from Quebec during the school break, just as the virus cycle was cresting in France. This probably led to a higher infection rate in Quebec than in BC.

Right, I forgot about that. Im sure thst made a difference to the numbers.

[Populist Fury]

Has anyone bought face masks or anything else from the following site: https://www.g2best.com/ ?????

 

I'm wanting to order those 60 n95 masks for someone, but don't wanna get scammed. There's a SoKo site that sells KF94 & 3M carbon masks, but are sold individually, & I'm looking for a batch of 50+

[BgMstr4u]

At this point (6:15 pm, 4/4/2020), according to RCP's chart of state statistics, Florida is now 10th in terms of total deaths, 9th (up from 19th) in terms of deaths per million. That's how quickly this is changing.

Data Comparison Check:

Florida,16 days later: At this point (3:45 pm PDT, 4/20/20), according to RCP's chart of state statistics, Florida is still 10th in terms of total deaths, but 22nd in terms of deaths per million, down from 9th on April 4. And not for lack of testing, at least in relative terms: Florida is third in total numbers of tests administered (273,552), after New York (633,861) and California (280,900). Not the big explosion I and perhaps others were expecting.

Edited April 20, 2020 by BgMstr4u

[MikeBiDude]

I found these stats from the New York City official website encouraging.....check the bar graph cases/hospitalizations/deaths

 

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

 

Isn’t this THE HOTSPOT?

[mike carey]

I've looked at the FT charts and occasionally scan-read the threads their author posts in Twitter. Today I've read a bit more closely and he is really thorough, looking in great detail at a variety of trends in the statistics. I'm about to go back in a minute and go down a few of the rabbit burrows there. A couple of things, he explains why he (along with other reporting on the epidemic) uses logarithmic scales on the y-axes of charts (it's in a video), and why cases and deaths per million people is not of much value in analysing things. He also does a dive down and looks at regional statistics (for over 100 regions) for a different perspective than that provided by national figures. There's a lot of stuff there, and there's some intelligent discussion in the comments (some asking why he does things, when he had already said why in the thread, but this is Twitter).

 

[MEDIA=twitter]1252696929244413959[/MEDIA]

[Guest]

Has anyone bought face masks or anything else from the following site: https://www.g2best.com/ ?????

 

I'm wanting to order those 60 n95 masks for someone, but don't wanna get scammed. There's a SoKo site that sells KF94 & 3M carbon masks, but are sold individually, & I'm looking for a batch of 50+

Unless you are in full protective gear, which you are able to change in between each person you see, I would not buy masks with the thought that it's protecting YOU from getting Covid-19. The idea behind the masks is that it will limit droplet spread to decrease your ability to transmit it to others. Just about anything you put in front of your face (as long as it's not a mask with one of those one-way valves) will do.

[+ tassojunior]

Unless you are in full protective gear, which you are able to change in between each person you see, I would not buy masks with the thought that it's protecting YOU from getting Covid-19. The idea behind the masks is that it will limit droplet spread to decrease your ability to transmit it to others. Just about anything you put in front of your face (as long as it's not a mask with one of those one-way valves) will do.

 

Nothing but full protective gear (Hazmat) will protect virtually 100% (or 95%) but a mask of decent sort will also protect you, maybe only 80%, but that's a whole lot better than zero. Washing hands/hand sanitizer helps a bunch too.

[+ tassojunior]

Unless you are in full protective gear, which you are able to change in between each person you see, I would not buy masks with the thought that it's protecting YOU from getting Covid-19. The idea behind the masks is that it will limit droplet spread to decrease your ability to transmit it to others. Just about anything you put in front of your face (as long as it's not a mask with one of those one-way valves) will do.

 

Nothing but full protective gear (Hazmat) will protect virtually 100% (or 95%) but a mask of decent sort will also protect you, maybe only 80%, but that's a whole lot better than zero. Washing hands/hand sanitizer helps a bunch too.

[Guest]

Nothing but full protective gear (Hazmat) will protect virtually 100% (or 95%) but a mask of decent sort will also protect you, maybe only 80%, but that's a whole lot better than zero. Washing hands/hand sanitizer helps a bunch too.

 

I agree on the hand washing/sanitizing, but on what basis do you make the claim that a mask protects the wearer from Covid-19?