Virus World Update

We're finally seeing a downturn in Italian new cases, about 12%. They are hardly out of the woods. A downturn in deaths as well, but the numbers there may continue to be high for a couple of weeks, at least. Penetration/Incidence still increased of course, and is nearing 1000/1M. For the rest of the world that would appear to be the real life worst scenario. If those rates were repeated in the US (and they're not and there is no reason at all to expect them to be), the US would be looking at 330,000 cases and 30,000 deaths the same number of days from onset.

Quite seriously, that kind of numbers in the US in that time frame are not achievable. Not even if every confirmed case in the US put a serious, 5 minute French liplock on 10 uninfected individuals each. (Ewww the image!! Brain bleach! More brain bleach!!!) My point is that this pretty much blows all those really scary, panic-inducing "possibilities" out of the water. Of course I'm only talking about the current time frame. so there will indeed be too many more cases and deaths both in Italy and here. But lets put a lid on the insane panic. Italy is seeing a real drop. Almost certainly they're passing through the worst. I don't see any reason to expect these numbers to more than double. And they probably won't do that. While epidemic infections are usually our old friend the Bell curve, the deaths tend to be front loaded. and give you a skewed curve pointing to the right. I.e. as the new cases wind down the deaths decrease more rapidly.

Anyway, Italy is still in a world of hurt. I hope we study this carefully and use it to make things work better in the future.

Spain has seen almost a 25% decrease in new cases but an increase in almost 25% increase in new deaths. First, they are still left of the curve compared to Italy in deaths, but they were never in exactly the same position as Italy. Very bad but not godawful. In Italy after triage the remaining critical cases (Italy still has 3000 S/C) are getting better care as those who unfortunately didn't get access to really good care died. That is, the dying in Italy was very front-loaded while it has not been that bad in Spain. Still bad, with 1750 S/C cases.

Germany decreased new cases by about 15% and is basically flat over the past 3 past days. They have always had few deaths. This may well be a case of them defining COVID deaths very differently. They also have few S/C cases. Again, is this definitional? I don't have access to their overall death rates from all causes, so it may the case, but I can't tell one way or the other. Germany may be/probably is entering the downside of the spread.

France and the UK are reporting fewer cases and either flat (France) or declining (UK) death rates. Decent news for both. Penetration is still going up because they are still finding new cases. France's is still high at 245/1M, and UK is still low at 84.
France till has 2500+ S/C cases while UK has very few. I'm not sure but this may imply that the UK has "flattened the curve" but will have longer exposure and many deaths to come. Better than a steep curve like Italy that crashes the system.

My two weird cases, Switzerland and the Netherlands both show flat or slightly down trends in mew cases and larger decreases in new deaths. I think this implies they're past the worst as well. Whatever made them different from most of the rest of Western Europe has evidently played out.

Belgium is flat or neutral in new cases and deaths. The Nordic states all seem to be trending at least slightly downward in new cases and deaths. They're probably past the worst as well.

Canada has an uptrend in both new cases and deaths. That is expected since the got hit late and are undoubtedly in the earlier stages. They're still not in bad shape and probably won't get that way.

Overall, I'd say Europe in general is past the worst. At least the data seems to show that.

In the US I am hoping that we'll reach that stage in 2-3 days. The state data from large, low-population states suggests that they have passed the worst. Larger population states,with big cities of people who encounter many others routinely may have a ways to go. It's time to pay closer attention to CA, TX FL, OH. PA, MI and so one. TX may be interesting if I can get data for Houston (very spread out) compared to more densely populated big cities.

Tonight the data makes me more hopeful than not. I don't see any reason to assume wild worst case scenarios. I think whatever comes will be much closer to the best case scenarios. We probably won't get that either, but still below my median case guess.

And it's not over yet. There is a lot of dying coming, but probably no more than an additional amount similar to what we've already seen. A small fear of re-infection hitting is not wrong, but most countries will be better prepared for it, and it should be less. Also, there is no reason that I see for COVID-19 to be worse than almost viruses in re-infecting those who have already had it. Guess we'll see.