Virus Update 3-21
I probably should just quit reporting the data from China, Iran,and Russia. It all looks like garbage. I'm sure it's politics. I'm not an International Relations guy, but China is reporting either very few or no new cases, depending on where you look, but there are videos that show long lines of people at hospitals. I'm not overly paranoid (he said, looking around suspiciously), but I'm wondering if they're setting up to in the future releasing 'new' data with lots of infections and claim that they've been 're-infected' by the West. Just a hunch with no evidence.
Meanwhile Russia is still reporting so few cases they don't even rank with the Baltic states. Oh, well.
Iran is now showing more cases again, 966 new and 20,000+, but I can't see how they're testing at all. They don't seem to have the capacity to do many tests. Deaths up to 1556, for a rate of nearly 8%. They also claim 7635 recovered. That is totally out of line with any other country except China. They are probably in worse shape than Italy. Multiple reports, at least some of them plausible put the actual number of deaths at 3-4X the official number. We probably won't know until it's over and maybe not then. The political situation there has to be incredibly tense.
On to the US. Case numbers trickle in 24/7. I was seeing new cases reported last night at 2 AM. Anyway, so far today 2600 new cases at noon EST, and 22,000+ cases overall. Still more or less on the same trend with many more tests coming in. That is neutral to good news. 25 new deaths and a total of 281.That is a rate of just over 1% which is holding steady. If that continues, then obviously how many deaths will depend on how many actual cases there are. I am hoping, from looking at other OECD that we are beginning to test so many people that we will start finding more mild cases and the death rate will be lower. We'll see in a few more days. I'm still concerned that the recovered cases are very low. I think that's because we wait longer to certify recovery, but it still bothers me. 147 is extremely low compared to other OECD. We're still not seeing a lot of penetration, only 0.000067 of the total population. I understand that we have a lot of wide open spaces where perhaps it is unlikely to be exposed, but still . . . And CA is still reporting a very low number of cases for 40M people, 1200 or so. That makes them number 3 behind NY and WA. And WA seems to be trending down. They've now found fewer cases 3 days in a row. Almost half of the state have no deaths to report so far. And not all of them are Montana. That would seem to be good. No update today on how many tests have been administered.
In Europe: Italy and Spain are still in trouble, but Italy as usual hasn't reported today yet. Nearly 6000 new cases yesterday. The new number will be interesting. They are out of beds and treatment I think, and medical personnel are exhausted.
Spain has 3800 new cases so far today and 285 new deaths. Their penetration is growing slowly. They are probably out of the needed beds, personnel, and such. The next couple of days we'll see if their death rate increases from the current. 5.5%. 25,000+ cases.
Netherlands is still weird. Kind of median penetration but with a death rate of nearly 4%. 637 new cases and 3631 total. 2 recovered, 354 S/C. Switzerland as well. Huge penetration, above 700, and approaching Italy's 779. but a death rate of 1% and 141 S/C. The European countries vary a lot. Again, culture, density, medical infrastructure, policy, etc. Going to be a lot of work after it passes to understand what made differences and why.
France not reporting yet, but Germany right now shows fewer than 2000 new cases, down from 4500 yesterday. That would be amazing if it holds. It is currently around 7 PM in Germany and they generally don't show many new cases after that. I'll be watching. 75 deaths, penetration kind of median at 261/1M, 209 recovered and only 2 S/C. That is all looking really good.
UK is ticking up slowly. 4000+ cases, 141 new, 180 deaths.Death rate 4.5%. penetration very low at 60/1M. Most of the rest of Europe shows 1200-2000 cases per country. Norway has very high penetration but only 1 death and Denmark has high penetration with only 3 deaths. I wonder if lowish populations and somewhat high density population and cold weather in general has led them to be better prepared to handle the cases they have,
Australia and Canada each reporting 1000+ cases and only 7 and 13 deaths.
Right now the trends all seem to be holding, but not really accelerating anywhere except perhaps Spain. Given that all OECD are doing major testing (the number of tests where I look for data haven't update since Thursday. Maybe later I'll see more.) that would seem to be good news. It certainly implies a bit of flattening and finding mile cases compared to last week.
Italy Update: Data just in. Probably 7:30 PM or so there. 6600 new cases, up about 9% from yesterdays new cases. They may be reaching their peak. 54,500 cases, 4825 deaths, penetration now up to 886/1M. A real mixed bag. They are so screwed. Death rate 9%!!! and rising. It looks to get worse (death rate) given the circumstances there. 627 new deaths yesterday, 793 today. That is just awful. 2857 S/C. They are almost certainly past real triage. No way to they have adequate facilities for that many S/C, especially when the cases are still apparently mostly in Lombardy and Tuscany. (I will look at the regions later.) I would not be surprised if half or more of the S/C cases died. And their medical staffs apparently are both exhausted and becoming infected. This is beyond tragic.
I am going to see if I can find anything useful in the US states data since we now have enough cases in enough states to maybe be able to see something.