That graph is sure sobering, and alarming to think of the slow rate of testing and quarantine so far. Here's to hoping that they get "over the hill" during this month or April..
We will keep seeing graphs that go up and down until this pandemic somehow ends. Looking at a graph where the cases keep oscillating every few months is really demoralizing.
> * Florida, which was hypermediatized in late summer, then silently recovered.
> * Balkan countries, which had an early wave, and are on a recovery course. Note how their case numbers didn't go that high, most likely because they are poor and testing penetration is not that high.
And...if the graph keeps looking like it has, we will have spikes followed by drops followed by spikes again, wash, rinse, and repeat. Florida has a different cycle (maybe AC related as people get cold inside during the hot summer, and the fall comes along and weather is nice, and then a cold snap might happen in January).
the graph shows new cases are down from the peak and decreasing. this means immunity development is going to be a lot slower than it has been until now
> The curve will barely flatten, before 'peak infection' is reached. At the current rate, we have only 1 or 2 months to accomplish this, and no progress so far.
The curve is flat (at least the new "X" curve) in both Seattle and the Bay Area. That's definitely progress.
Referencing the http://coronavirus-realtime.com/ website, the graph of the number of infections over time is suspiciously non-exponential right now. I think China and the rest of the world are both struggling to collect data on confirmed cases.
These curves are all lagging by weeks, and are influenced heavily by test rates and transmission rates. Our tests rates are low (until about 3 days ago) and our transmission rates are high (because many populous states have issues no shelter-at-home directives). You don't have to wait long to see more clearly, just about a week.
It's a reflection of improved testing, but it is also an indicator of how bad things really are. The reason for the huge jump is that the virus has been spreading unchecked and undetected for much too long.
They are going slow. It will take years to get back to pre-covid levels (2.5%-ish), which were low as it is. We haven't had a historically "normal" rate since the mid 2000's (4 to 5% ish.) There will no doubt be another crisis before we get anywhere near there.
It's the potential for exponential growth that has people concerned: look at growth rate of new cases in Korea, Italy, and Iran in last two weeks. US is harder to judge due to lack of testing, may be experiencing the same case rate growth.
Numbers in China were bad and it the equivalent of martial law for weeks to slow new cases to a trickle. It's not clear they are out of the woods and may see additional flare ups as they relax restrictions.
It's precisely because precautionary measure are being taken (I have seen notices of cancellation and lists of mandatory precautionary measures for more than a dozen events just in last two days).
Even in places where 0.05% of the population has confirmed cases of the virus, I’m seeing the curve flatten. Whether that’s from quarantine of from the virus hitting its limit, I can not say. But the curve is flattening.
Look at the infection rates in those countries: they're S-curves. New infections are being found, but the rate of increase is far lower than it was previously, and the majority of cases are cleared up. That shows they're likely on the tail end of the problem.
For European countries and the US, the curve looks asymptotic. There's no telling how high it'll go at this point.
What's the positive cases per test rate? I'm assuming that is going up, which is bad.
The one admittedly lagging indicator that I'm watching is hospitalized cases.
So far that's ok, and ideally you could possibly have an increase in positive cases throughout a population without more hospitalizations if high risk people isolate themselves. But yeah, hope it doesn't go sideways.
That is chilling. As wise people have said, be always on look out for any exponential trends because that's what would change the world. In this graph, although data is limited, it appears the number of cases are doubling every month. At this rate we can easily hit 10,000 by end of year. And THE 10,000 is almost always a magic number where tipping point occurs and power laws becomes unstoppable then on. It is a chilling graph. I'll keep an eye on this every month now.
I've given up on the USA numbers. There is no way an underlying exponential process is going to deliver you a near constant 30K new infections for nearly 4 straight weeks.
Something else is driving those numbers, and it ain't the actual number of new infections. For me the obvious candidate is they hits some testing limit.
I don't like those "days since 100 cases" graphs either, with the steep slope for the US (for growth of confirmed cases). I'm betting that our "actual/confirmed" ratio at that point of 100 confirmed cases was ridiculously high compared to other countries.
Once testing actually ramps up in the US... I'd expect similar cases to pop up all over the Bay Area. The Fairfield case was infectious starting weeks ago.
The CDC site shows only 8 more tests having happened in the last few days (aka: preposterously low!). We're really flying blind until we have more data and testing. When the history of this epidemic in the US is written, it will be noted that the entire month of February was wasted diagnostically and critical opportunities to still attempt containment lost.
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