Something that you might consider looking at when comparing countries or areas is the ratio of active cases to recovered. A higher ratio suggests that the epidemic is in an earlier stage.
Sweden has about 23 active cases for each one recovered. The US is about 10:1, Europe overall is about 2:1, so is Italy, and Spain is close to 1:1. Asia as a whole is about 1:1.
Indeed, I am basing my confidence on the trendline in the graph on page 13. The number of people infected (41K) is about two thirds now as compared to the peak (58K), and the CFR is dropping exponentially as cases resolve.
It's from mid November. Since then, at a near 200k/day rate, another 10M+ diagnosed cases have been recorded.
In other words: that article extrapolates from the CDC report of 10 million cases in November, and that is now sitting at around 23M. If anything, the estimate should be way above 70M.
Three months ago deaths were doubling every 2 to 3 days. That's some of the little data we really have. Same virus (although there are speculations that perhaps now there are multiple forms). We're being more careful about transmission ... except when we're not. We seem to be better at treatment. Vulnerable population is unchanged.
I‘m in a city of 3.5 Million that saw 15 to 20 new infections per day over the last week (Berlin, Germany). At that level, it’s perfectly possible to mostly open up again and still reduce infections further by extensively tracking every single case and their contacts.
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