Tracking the COVID-19-Virus in Germany, the USA, Italy and other hot spots in the world

At yesterday's Task Force press conference update, Dr. Birx put in a special word for people who have survived living with AIDS for 40 years now. She did include them as a special population, like the elderly, who need to be more protected from virus. Anyone with immune issues needs to be more protected.

I'm not sure about herpes. Does herpes constitute a serious immunity disorder? Good question. I don't know.

 

Indeed. The US should have been testing in quantity two weeks ago. THAT was a fatal error.

 

Unfortunately, it looks like that prediction will be correct, and that is without true reporting from Russia, Turkey, India or the bulk of South America, which means the double rate will become shorter and shorter as those 4 nations and one entire continent start telling the truth. Very likely 170 million infected people right around Labor Day may end up being a very conservative estimate. It's really quite depressing for me. This is a case where I hope to G-d that my numbers are wrong, very wrong.

 

It appears that 3 of the 9 known versions of herpes constitute an immune disorder :

https://www.imedpub.com/proceedings/the-role-of-herpes-viruses-in-autoimmune-diseases-658.html

So, it depends on which herpes a person has.

 

Dr. Fauci and OH Gov. DeWine and NYC Mayor de Blasio made the rounds of Morning Shows today.

I gathered that some are of the opinion that this (public isolation) could (possibly) go on for several months (maybe even 6 or more).

The economic impact is unfathomable.

Imagine the Entire "Summer Vibe" being wiped out in 2020.

People in the Travel, Service, Hotel, Casino, Etc. industries are going to need a public bailout (if this goes on longer than 2 months).

When it starts bleeding into the Entire Summer Tourism Scene, that is gonna be the Worst.

 

China would have the normal level of business travel, topped off by millions of Asian-Americans going to China to visit relatives during the month of January. China also has millions of citizens who don't want to deal with influx of January tourists and take vacation to leave the country for other destinations.

Approx. 500,000,000 people flock to China for family reunions in January, and about 7 million Chinese head out to vacation in other countries around the world. That's all in one month (in addition to business travelers). In total about 3 Billion people were moving about China in January (most of those within Asia).

China had increased tourism and dollars for the entire month of January. The “Spring Festival Transportation” and begins 15 days before the start of Lunar New Year, so the festivities started January 10th. Certainly they would have had more if they hadn't done the shut down right before the Lunar New Year's Day, but would have also had more global criticism as this pandemic would be far worse than it is.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there at this point. The virus has hopped all over the globe since it's inception in China.

 

It's a Day of Prayer (for those who pray)...

 

It's a shame the first test developed by the CDC was faulty. CDC thought they had developed a far more accurate test than the one that WHO was using. Human error did leave us scrambling for a few weeks. Still, testing is only a measurement. It would not have impacted that which it measures. The simple advice of hand-washing, covering coughs/sneezes, staying home when sick, and social distancing is always valid. More people might have taken it seriously early on if we had "numbers".

Anyway, they were able to detect positives when there was no other explanation, like testing negative for any known other virus. That person became a "presumed positive", until CDC verified.

Sounds like we're moving forward quickly now with "numbers and data", including with the approval of robotic test analysis, which does not require a human to mix all the chemicals together to get the results.

 

An interim report: what I am about to report is heart-breaking. No one can read this and not tear-up some. It's about Italy.

When I started this thread last evening, less than 24 hours ago, these were the figures for the COVID-19 virus:



So, that was yesterday at 7:10 PM on the East Coast.

Today, in the last 10 minutes, 18 hours after I started this thread, these newest figures:



That's a jump of +11,205 reported infections worldwide, a jump of +634 deaths, an increase in the mortality rate to 3.86% and a reduction in the recovery rate, down to 45.78%. But look what is driving most of that increase (this is, omg...):



In Italy alone, 3,590 new infections were confirmed today, and 368 human beings died in just one day. While the overall mortality rate for the world is currently 3.86%, in Italy, it is 7.31%. In response to these numbers, the Pope in Rome has cancelled all Easter celebrations in Peters Square.

These are not the end numbers for the day, but they are already over the doubling-point I indicated in the OP. I will deal with this later.

The deaths in Italy have really shaken me as a feeling human. This is the third day in a row that Italy has posted catastrophal death totals.

Just to illustrate: 7.3% of 220 million American adults would be: 16.1 million dead.

Now you know why I am shaking. This could be the USA in just 14 days.

-Stat

 

Yes, it's a shame. But the South Koreans had already developed a perfectly working test and OFFERED the test to us. Trump turned the South Koreans down. And I disagree with you on whether it matters. The quicker you can find a case and get it out of the traffic zone, then the less possibilities for further transmission.

 

That is a terrifying jump in the number of cases.

Here is another bit of an ominous factor:



The portion taken by China is going to continue shrinking.

 

Well, that is very sad for the Italians. My heart goes out to all the friends and families who are losing loved ones in Italy (and anywhere else).

It sounds like you practice your religion versus being more secular. I take some comfort in the faith and the knowledge that we humans are not in control, but rather a higher power guides everything according to His purpose. We don't understand the purpose of tragedy. I don't believe we were designed or meant to understand everything. Meanwhile, prayer never hurts.

The little control we do have is to follow the advise to protect our elders and the weak, and to minimize interactions with others for a little while.

 

Trying to minimize cases by shutting down traffic from China early on and screening everyone who did travel from China was the initial strategy for keeping cases out of our traffic zone. Unfortunately, too many people were travelling in early January when no one was paying attention.

Italy was conducting lots of tests far earlier than many countries and you see they are not having better results for the effort.

It is sad to take a look at an article from 20 days ago at Italy's first few cases and what they were doing when they only had 283 cases and 7 deaths.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...lures-bad-luck-fuel-italy-s-coronavirus-surge

Italy did everything they thought was best. We are doing what we think is best. Every sovereign country is doing what they think is best. It's not the time to cry over spilled milk with "would have, could have, should have" thinking. It's time to focus on today and tomorrow.

 

If the RO is 4 and conservative estimates are 5 days until shedding virus, the first case was documented jan 19, 46 days ago.
The patient was symptomatic on diagnosis so he had already infected 4 people.
So that's 9+1 cycles of spread from one person.
With a growth rate of 4^x, that's 1,048,576 people,
All from one source. You can assume he wasn't the only carrier at the time of diagnosis, so the numbers are higher.

Where are the bodies? 3% death rate would equal tens of thousands of bodies.
The reported cases are much much lower than actual cases, as is the death rate.
The sickest among us will die, but the sickest among us die from the smallest of insults. This is not surprising.

 

So, Italy in detail.

First, whether or not you can read or speak italiano, their COVID-19 WIKI is updated the most quickly and the graphics are pretty self-explanatory.

Here is how the infection looks from province to province (the darker the color, the higher the number of infections):



You can see that in the uppermost (northern), mountainous part of Italy, mostly in Lombardy, the infections have pretty much taken over the industrial area.

Here the same provinzial map, but with red circles to depict the intensity of the pandemic in Italy:



Here the exact breakdown out of the 24,747 currently confirmed infections, by province:



confirmati = confirmed
decesse = deceased
guarigione = recovering (not necessarily recovered)
Tamponi esseguiti = (literally: swabs performed) / (poetic: tests conducted)

So, out of 124,799 tests conducted in all of what is within the borders of Italy, 24,747 cases have showed up as positive. That's a 19.81% positivity rate. In other words, right now, 1 out of every 5 Italians is very likely to be infected. 1,809 dead out of 24,747 positive cases = 7.31% mortality rate. Now comes the shocking figure, just as shocking as the deaths: 2,335 recovering out of 24,747 positive cases = 9.44% recovery rate, just barely above the current mortality rate. That means that the VAST majority of confirmed positive cases are sick enough to some degree as to not be able to say that they are recovering.

When you see the trajectory of this over just 45 days, it gets even bleaker::



We have gone from 2 confirmed cases on day 1 to 24,747 confirmed cases on day 45. That's a 12,374-fold increase over day one- and worse yet, in 12 of the last 14 days, the growth rate has been at or over 20%.

Assuming just 18% growth rate every day for a while:

Day 45: 24,747
Day 46 (tomorrow): 24,747 + 4,454 = 29,201
Day 47 (Tuesday): 29,201 +5,256 = 34,457
Day 48 (Wednesday): 34,457 + 6,202 = 40,659
Day 49 (Thursday): 40,659 + 7,318 = 47,977
Day 50 (Friday): 47,977 + 8,636 = 56,613

This is critical. Today, 15 March 2020 is the fifth day since (and including) 11 March and from 11 March to 15 March, the number of infections doubled. From today until coming Friday, the number of infected will likely double again. This means that currently, the number of positive cases is doubling every 5 days.

But let's be more conservative and assume a doubling every seven days instead of every five, so starting with coming Friday:

Friday, 20 March 2020: 56,613
Friday, 27 March 2020: 113,226
Friday, 03 April 2020: 226,452
Good Friday, 10 April 2020: 452,904
Friday, 17 April 2020: 905,808
Friday, 24 April 2020: 1,811,616
Friday, 01 May 2020: 3,623,232

If the chain of infections does not abate, then even with conservative calculations, we are looking at 3.6 million infections in Italy alone, just 3 months after the pandemic began.

7.31% of 3,623,232 = 257,250 potential deaths just in Italy, if the current mortality rate holds.

It is being reported in numerous German media articles that many deaths are occuring in Italy due to triage, as there are not enough beds, doctors, blood or therapeutics to stem the worsening of those who have taken sick and so in some cases, the elderly are being left to simply die because there is nothing that can be done - which is exactly what happened many, many times in 1918.

Folks, if what is happening in Italy takes root all over the world, then we have a problem on our hands the likes of which we have never seen before. This is extremely sobering. I am not sure how many people realize the danger in the word "exponential".

-Stat

 

What is ominous about that? The population of China is 1.4 Billion. The rest of the world makes up the other 6.2 Billion.

They could probably stop separating the data between China alone and the rest of the world as one big chunk relatively soon. I know we're comparing because China had a several week head start on the rest of the world, but how much longer will it be useful? Maybe until the rest of the world peaks?

It is discouraging to see the "rest of the world" increasing at an increasing rate, while China increased at a decreasing rate fairly early. Still we would expect the majority of the world's aggregate population to exceed the numbers of just China alone.

 

I am certainly not crying over spilled milk, but imo you are far too willing to overlook Trump's many and very fatal mistakes. I will write not more about this, because we now have far bigger fish to fry.

Putting that aside, yes, shutting off traffic between the USA and China early on was a good idea, probably the one sane thing he has done thus far. However, be careful: screening is not the same as testing. So, even these precautions were not enough and we were being warned way back in the early part of 2020 - wait, that was just 2 months ago, feels like 12 years - that the precautions were not enough.

Hopefully, people will learn and correct course now.

 

The Lombard region is the wealthy class and 1/6th of the Italian population lives there. They also are the area which had significant business dealings with China, before Italy shut down travel from China last month. When they quarantined the northern part of Italy, they gave people warning, and many people fled to the south of Italy because people don't like being forcibly quarantined. So some of the infected people moved to the less infected area of the country.

Italy's public health care system has failed to keep up for the various reasons which have already been discussed on this thread. They are having to make moral decisions on who lives and who dies. If you have enough resources to care for one person and five are sick who do you heal? One doctor will live while four less "resourceful" people will be left by the wayside.

It is improbable that the rate of increase in cases will continue at the same pace. China stopped reporting cases which tested positive in people who were not showing any symptoms, and their curved flat-lined. It's possible that no one in the world is using an accurate test right now.

 

Every country has "fatal" mistakes. I'm not blaming decisions made by any country including the U.S. Everyone in the world is doing the best they can. Everyone makes decisions that seem right at the time the decision is made. It's only hindsight whether those decisions were good or bad. We won't know who "did best" until this thing is over, and it shouldn't be a competition anyway.

 

It will be interesting to see the effect of the lockdown in Italy.
I think it happened on the 12th. So maybe another week before we might see it?

 

The rate of contagion will slow as more people become fearful and really do start staying home, which is already happening in Europe. It will happen here in the U.S. too as people become alarmed (or the city forces shutdowns).

I was shocked to see that my city is trying to track down over 100 people associated with only our 3rd case in the city. Extroverts and extremely social people who can't stand the thought of staying home for awhile are the super-spreaders. Introverts who usually prefer stay home anyway, except for work and necessary shopping won't infect many.

#GenX is trending on Twitter right now. I can relate to the humor of it, but really, I think that introverts of any age and generation are most likely to survive this thing better and take it all in stride.

My generation was just already "trained" from childhood to be alone in the house everyday for hours until the parental units got home from work.

 

I showed what happens when you slow spread from 4^x to 2^x.
This is exponential.
The cat is way out of the bag.
Everyone that would be exposed will be exposed in short order

 

Indeed. It should not be competition, but rather, cooperation.

 

That is, of course, the 66,000 EURO question.

I would have hoped that the lockdown would have helped by now, but we don't know that for sure either. It can be that many who have died have been sick for 2 weeks.
Unfortunately, many are dying already after just 5 or 6 days.

 

And yet I have a real problem with this: "OMG, look at Italy. It *could* be us!". First, condolences to the Italians. Secondly, not only is it not US. No other country is suffering these massive rates either. Different religious/travel activities during the months where we didn't know about this coronavirus seem to be a really big difference.

This is the type of fear mongering that's happening. There's something called a curve projection, and the curve projection in the US even with today's increase pails in comparison to the Italians, Chinese, etc.