Loading ...An Island of Hope in a Sea of Despair
First of all I want to say this in no way is to disrespect those who are in or near “Hot Spots” in the world and are living through this Virus Scare up close and personal.
Folks like Alfa8 who have had an encounter with Covid-19 do not want to hear everything is alright..
It Isn’t …
But I continue to look for signs that the Virus is NOT continuing to grow exponentially and that the dire worst case scenario being promoted by doomsters that it will continue to grow exponentially and kill Millions World Wide
and its just a matter of time ( not much time) that each of us will have to deal with it…is not accurate.
This site is excellent. It gives the numbers of cases and deaths each day for each country and has graphs
Linear and Logarithmic .
The clock resets at 0:00 GMT ( which is 8 PM Eastern Daylight time )
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
…..
CASES
Todays number of new cases World Wide is down from yesterday’s new cases for the first time since things started to escalate. The Graph below shows number of new cases per day but does not include todays number which is
58,150 . Notice todays number is lower than each of the last 3 days. It is encouraging to see that the numbers have not been rising exponentially for the last 4 days now. NO we cannot declare victory..it’s early and things can change but this is encouraging.
…..
DEATHS
Todays new covid deaths is also down from yesterday’s count at 3,081 vs 3,518
Again here is the graph excluding todays number
Italy
Italy’s new cases have been a real concern for all of us and the tragedy there has been and continues to be heartbreaking
BUT look at todays number of new cases (5,217) and add it mentally to the graph…which shows that for now the peak in new cases came a week ago and has been declining rather steadily. This is not exponential growth at this time.
For Logarithmic Chart Fans the Italian Curve has been flattening for a while now
USA
Of course The US started later than Italy and has been rising exponentially unabated…until today
New Cases 18,203 are marginally below yesterdays 19,452…small difference and maybe not statistically significant BUT it is lower ..not higher for the first time since things got serious.
…..
Note many countries like Spain Germany and Canada also showed lower new cases today and a great many of the log charts are showing a slowing of the exponential curve.)
So now…IF these numbers are really decreasing how can this be useful to us other than it makes us feel there is going to be a time when we can come back to work and play.
Are the numbers coming under control because of the draconian shut down of activity in most countries or is this just the nature of the beast….parabolic rise in detected infections…leveling off….parabolic drop in detected infections. has Social distancing flattened the curve or is this what would happen anyhow ?
Sweden has taken a somewhat different approach . We have a member in Sweden ( who rarely posts) . I contacted him to see their approach
1…Businesses , Bars , restaurants are Open but business is not booming. IE people are voluntarily being cautious
2…Gatherings of over 50 are discouraged
3…High Schools and Universities are physically closed but the classes continue for all online
4….Public schools are open …this allows health care workers and virtually all workers with smaller children to continue to do essential work.
5…Seniors and those with immunocompromising Conditions are asked to stay home and not have visitors ( including family)…The reason is there are only about 300 intensive care beds in the country.
To me this is a very level headed common sense approach.
Protect the most vulnerable but don’t shut down the whole country.
Let people decide for their selves how much “risk” they wish to take….realizing that the risk for younger age groups is very miniscule.
So how is this working out for Swedes ?
Note the deaths are virtually all in the 70 and over with conditions group.
After a 1 day spike yesterday to 378 new cases today they had 253 ( not on the graph)
Finally…I have a question .
Given that…”Every death is a tragedy but thousands of deaths is a statistic (Paraphrasing Joseph Stalin)
How are we going to feel about / interpret the numbers of death looking back from a time when they have declined to the point where we are no longer needing to count them any more.
How will YOU feel if the now 33,000 world wide deaths from this thing peak out at say 100,000 or even 200,00
As we know the Flu kills in and around this number every year .
Yes this is Different.
Yes this is new and we have no real stats to tell us the % of infected ( including undetected ones) who die
Anyhow
Hopefully the trend we are seeing …very tentatively here…continues…No Guarantees but the trend is our friend
🙂
Thanks Fully!
I’ve seen the same thing, this is not pretty or fun, but the number of new cases is dropping.
And I think it is important to keep looking for positive signs.
Something that effected me years ago for the rest of my life, including today, was when I was watching a slide show of some missionary friends who had spent time in Africa dealing with constant death and disease. They showed villages that had been decimated. Villagers living in grass huts with no water or sewer of any kind. As far as you could see, all the ground was 6″ deep in mud.
Every picture they had taken of individual villagers, had a huge smile on their face! I thought at the time, how the hell could you be smiling, you have nothing and your friends and family are dying! I could only shake my head……
But then I saw how the human spirit has a whole different reaction. 🙂
Wow…there’s a lesson for us all
We collectively are cowering in fear of the unknown
But These people you are describing have had many more problems to deal with for many generations
Malnutrition Aids Malaria Diptheria and yet they still smile
Amazing
You almost have to throw out the data before Italy as those countries have not been totally upfront with their numbers. The data in Western Europe and the U.S. is now more important than ever in my opinion. This will all come out in the wash.
How do you know they are not upfront
China …Ok…maybe you can eliminate them …but the WHO has been there to verify.
But South Korea and Hong Kong and Singapore and Taiwan can be trusted as much as anything out of Europe…no ?
Without adequate testing, and testing in confidence, there is no reliable information in the aggregate.
Even the metric that I was relying on … recovered share of resolved cases (deaths + recovered), probably focuses mostly on the seriously ill patients to the exclusion of many others. Ie, it largely ignores the mildly symptomatic.
But it also ignores what I’ve read to be HUGE numbers of folks in China and Italy that died in their homes, without ever having been tested, during or after their ordeals.
Yes but I am talking about new documented cases …that’s a metric we can watch for clues.
Not % this or that…just the raw numbers of new diagnosed cases…is it rising or falling…linear or exponential
The death rates per infection will be determined in a couple years with antibody ( blood ) tests
Italy has number close to 10% mortality. That doesn’t take into account non tested and as Pedro points out dead but not tested. There is still the fact to contend with that the large number infected are in process of recovering or succumbing. Bad situation for sure.