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

You also have the Pittsburgh manufacturing hub on I-70 on the Eastern border of Ohio and Detroit on I-75 to the North.

 

I think the hot spots here in Seattle, Washington and Santa Clara County and the Bay Area, California can intuitively be tied to the large Asian-American communities in those locations. It is unfortunate that the virus broke out during the time of the largest global annual migration of people to China, with Asian expatriates from all over the globe going to China for family reunions and the Chinese New Year's Festival.

The hot spot in New Rochelle, New York apparently had a man who worked in Manhattan. We don't know where he contracted the disease. I can't imagine how the virus could be traced back to a "patient-one" in a place as large as Manhattan. He ended up being a "super spreader" at his community synagogue.

At this point, the CDC is saying that this is no longer the "Chinese" virus, but the "European" virus, as most of the new cases in the U.S. are being traced to travel from Europe instead of earlier cases being tied to travel from China.

Going forward, we're likely to lose ability to track the source and end up with mostly "generic" community spread, just like the common cold or flu.

We've had 3 cases in my city. One was transferred from a small rural hospital to the more advanced hospital here, so he wasn't roaming around the city. One case was traced back to a Houston-area man who had recent foreign leisure-travel. That woman is placed under voluntary quarantine at home. With the newest active case, the city says they are trying to track down over 100 people who made contact with her. She was apparently quite the social butterfly, spreading the love around the city, or hopefully just around her own neighborhood.

So, I don't know that whether an area is industrialized or not makes much difference. The virus doesn't appear to be selective. It travelled from China all over the globe and now we just have to hope people will be sensible until it runs out of steam.

Take care and stay safe. Keep those updates coming!

 

Why the reliable sources and data provided by Statistikhengst are important

Knowledge is power, but must be predicated upon the availability of accurate information.

Coronavirus is 14 times more potent than the typical flu, and for elderly people, the risk rises substantially.

Ignorance is a fertile breeding ground for COVID-19, and the demographic most vulnerable to the virus is also the most vulnerable to fake information, ideological propaganda.

Consider the mortality data provided by the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention:

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This correspondence underscores the importance of Trump finally deferring to the formerly demonized "deep state" dedicated public servants - those with expertise and experience in public medicine and epidemiology. Fox parrots whatever Trump says (Fox Business' performer Trish Regan denounced COVID-19 as a "scam," and Fox News entertainer Laura Ingraham urged her audience to ignore the "left's coronavirus fearmongering.")

As as long as he was spreading fake information, minimizing and distorting the seriousness of the pandemic, his television network was infecting his most committed followers with his erroneous notions that could well have devastating, tragic personal impacts on them.

As long as Trump continues to defer to the knowledgable folks, Fox will now report credible information to the elderly. *

* Much of Trump’s success has been fueled by his supporters’ distrust of career government officials. Yet as coronavirus cases multiply, many of those same supporters find themselves placing their faith in institutions like the C.D.C. — confident for perhaps the first time in Trump’s tenure that the experts on call aren’t out to sabotage Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/us/politics/trump-supporters-coronavirus.html​

 

That is correct.

 

true, but there is only one hub where the two most travelled highways in America cross, and that's in Dayton. I would bet that truckstops are just a hotbed of COVID-19 activity, totally unbeknownst to the drivers.

It would actually be a good idea to do drive in testing at major truck and car stops across the country. I wonder if anyone else has suggested this idea.

 

Most mild cases will recovery in days, but serious cases can take weeks, especially if other complications like pneumonia develop. That's according to a report from Harvard Medical School.

The China recovery data is probably fairly accurate at almost 83% since the virus is in decline there. Most of the rest of the world is having so many new cases that the data is showing more new cases than recoveries at this point. There's too much overlap between brand new and new-ish existing cases. That should even out in a few weeks as Europe and the U.S. peak and then level out.

I even wonder if the health providers are being more vigilant about reporting new cases, and less so about reporting recoveries. They're kind of busy right now.

 

Germany and Italy both have universal health care. Germany is "okay" and Italy is being crushed at the moment. The age of the population makes a difference. Italy has the oldest population in Europe, and second oldest in the world (after Japan).

More important is not the type of health system, public or private, but the number of hospital beds available in a health crisis.

Hospital beds per 1000 people:
Germany has 8.
Italy has 3.2.
Japan has 13. (The highest number.)
S.Korea has >12.

The U.S. has around 2.8 hospital beds per 1000 people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hospital_beds

It wouldn't hurt to look at health care workers per capita either. With far less global travel, we should have plenty of empty hotel rooms to find extra beds. Reserve hospitals for those who need intensive care.

 

We are still focusing resources on hot spots. Drive in testing sites are opening in New York and California locations with high outbreaks. Then we'll go from there.

 

Someone posted the Chinese data by age, plus added some political garbage.

There are a lot of variables at play. The Chinese are the largest consumers of tobacco, particularly men (68% of Chinese men smoke). They also have to live in a cloud of industrial pollution from their manufacturing facilities.

That may actually be good news for countries in Europe and the U.S. where a much smaller percentage of people smoke and our air is clean.

 

Our air is only clean relative to China. It is still far from being unpolluted.

Our primary health problem is obesity and that results in heart disease and diabetes which are both risk factors for Covid-19.

So our data might not be all that different to China.

 

We'll have to see. It will be better, worse or the same. It also may be the same for different reasons. China let the virus spread for about 4 weeks (that we know of) to get as much tourism money as possible, then shut the entire Hubei Province right before the official festivities when things were getting out of hand. That shutdown was very effective at letting the virus burn out without further spread.

The rest of the world has let the virus spread, but rather than take Draconian measures, we are relying on individuals to self-isolate, practice social-distancing and good hygiene. Relying on the majority of people to do the right thing may be our downfall.

The world is one big lab experiment right now.

 

For now, the most alarming statistic about the virus for the US has been the ratio between those who have recovered from the virus (56) compared to those who have died (60) (or 52% mortality rate among concluded cases). The US is the only place with a large enough sample (admittedly, still a very small however) in the concluded category where more people have died from the virus than those who have recovered from it. Italy's numbers on this point are poor as well, with 1,966 people recovered compared to 1,441 who have died (42%). Elsewhere, the number of recovered people far exceeds those who have died. In concluded cases, the mortality rate in China is 5%, in South Korea 8%, and in Iran 14%.

 

..........

That is an Excellent Point.

In fact how Could any Citizen of the World possibly expect "America to do the right thing" when this country facilitated the election of Trump?

The Entire World has reason to be "skeptical" of the U.S. Response.

 

This might seem callous but given the abject failure of any kind of coherent direction or action from the criminal IMPOTUS regime it is entirely possible that we might end up with results that are not significantly any different to 3rd world nations.

 

That's because the U.S. just started testing in quantity last Monday. Only 6 days have passed.

Dr. Birx said that the testing is coming in at 98-99% negatives, so the rate of infection is encouraging so far.

 

Practically every free country is relying on their people to self-isolate, not just the U.S.

Italy locked down, but bars and restaurants were allowed to open normally until the contagion kept spreading. Now only supermarkets and pharmacies are open. If people don' t consciously do the right thing voluntarily, we will end up with government force. This is a test.

 

I hope it doesn't get that bad, but with Trump in charge anything is possible.

Hopefully (regardless of what happens) Voters Blame Trump and he gets voted out.

 

One problem. If you own a hotel would you want to bebknown as the hotel that housed covid patients? Ditto for schools. " You're not putting them where my kids goes to school." Pre fabs could work but is anyone getting them ready to deploy? If people are vigilant enough we can hope to avoid the spikes in cases that would overwhelm the system but I'd sure like to know a plan B is in place.

 

I noticed those numbers are different (some higher and some lower) than the Johns Hopkins ArcGIS data (which is the main data I've been using).

Does the data group you're compiling include some of the JH sources and exclude other JH sources?

I like the JH data because it does include other sources in addition to the CDC and WHO:

 

What are the odds that infected people are staying in hotels right now, undiagnosed? We know how to effectively disinfected rooms.

The hotel industry is expecting a short-tem financial catastrophe. There wouldn't be a lot of difference if the insurance companies (and/or Medicaid/Medicare) pay the cost of a hotel room versus a hospital room. When it comes down to it, a room is a room and a bed is a bed. Having patients stay at hotels during recovery once they're out of ICU would provide revenue from insurance versus no revenue at all.

Most people who are severely critical will still only need short-term intensive care and only moderate care afterward until they test negative. Most can go home to recover once out of ICU.

 

Looks like your prediction is spot on since it is LESS that 24 hours later and this is what it shows right now;

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

It could be pollution exacerbates pulmonary problems and makes people more susceptible. I would like to see statistics gathered on who dies. Were there more smokers who died? Did people with some conditions such as herpes or aids do better or worse? I read that herpes might provide some resistance to other viral infections or do the opposite. The more they learn, the better they can respond.

 

I'm not so sure than one can intuitively tie the large Asian-American community to the virus at all. According to travel statistics, families with close ties to a foreign country of origin, either in this generation or the one before, are less likely to travel than plain old American businessemen and women who travel once or more times in the week to Asia in order to conduct business, and most of those businesspeople are white, of European descent. But your point about the Chinese New Year is one worth considering. Only, China cancelled virtually all CNY celebrations as soon as the outbreak occured in Hubei, which would likely have resulted in a number of flight cancellations and a number of disappointed Asian-Americans. I'm not saying that your point is wrong, but rather, that there is another way to look at it.

That being said, one of the main reasons that the number of infected in the German speaking countries of the world is exploding is very likely: KARNEVAL, which people celebrated like crazy starting Weiberfastnacht (Thursday, 02/20/2020) through the big Monday parade known as Rosenmontag on 02/24/2020. And of course, on Ash Wednesday, 02/26/2020, millions of Catholic Germans went to mass and their faces were touched with the sign of the cross by priests who were practically 100% also celebrating KARNEVAL, although with less alcohol..... Immediately afterward, the first signs of community spread started in a very western county in North Rhein Westfalia called Rheinsberg. Rheinsberg is geographically pretty large but not densely populated. In small village popped up 1 case, then his wife, then his family and now 100 cases alone are from a little village, population maybe 1,000 at the most.

During Karneval, from that Thursday through that Monday, 10s of millions of Germans hit the streets and partied like crazy. This means that at least 55 million Germans were underway just as the Coronavirus had reached at least three or four corners of Germany. The timing could not have possibly been worse. Alone in Köln, at least 2 million people hit the streets for the Rosenmontag parade, which usually lasts up to 6 hours, bodies pressed up against each other, lots of people with colds sneezing on each other and all that jazz.

One case that popped up 7 days ago, in "Much" (Mukh) is a woman who is a very beloved horse trainer with a horse and pony farm. She gives riding lessons and takes care of peoples' horses. She didn't take part during Karneval, but many of her customers come from Köln and surely she contracted the disease from one of them. And so the chain goes farther and farther and farther.

Nice to hear from you.

 

Indeed.

 

Actually, the two sites tend to hopscotch around each other, but usually only by 100-200 in number.