April 5, 2020, 9:50 pm
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First, I feel like I need to explain that this is not what I do. I don’t analyze diseases and I have a day job, so I only have a limited time to read the news about what is happening. And so much of the news these days seems to involve about thirty seconds of what actually happens, and then eight and a half minutes of a panel of talking head experts telling me what I am supposed to think about those thirty seconds’ worth of news. I find such an arrangement deeply unsatisfying. And, while the plight of shelter animals during this crisis, or the lived experience and personal story of this or that individual may be compelling, that is not what I need to know, or have time to spend upon. I need to know WHAT IS GOING ON And what is GOING TO HAPPEN.
Unfortunately, doing the analysis at the end of every day and posting at 2 am just wasn’t sustainable. So this post, for example, is now examining last night’s numbers. Most of you will undoubtedly have already heard numbers that blow past these numbers, because that’s what life is like these days. Every day just blows the last day out of the water. But, if you’re new to this blog, you may gain an understanding you didn’t have previously. And if you’re returning, you already know.
Global Cases: up 5.95 percent, or 71,500, to 1,273,500. The relatively lower percentage increase may reflect what appears to have been a data collection spike yesterday in France, as someone informed me that there was a change in the way France was counting their cases – something to do with senior citizens in old folks’ homes – which accounted for 15,000 cases being added to the tally. That spike makes today’s increase appear relatively lower. Even if we remove those 15,000 cases, though, today’s increase of 71,500 is the first time in five days that the new case number has been less than the previous day’s. This could be an indicator of what appears to have been the inflection point in Italy on March 21. Spain’s inflection appears to have occurred on March 26. Those points are 16 and 11 days ago, respectively. This may have some predictive value for the United States.
US Cases: up 8.13 percent, or 25,300, to 336,675. Today’s growth rate is the lowest since February 29.
Global Deaths: up 7.3 percent, or 4,730 Deaths today, to 69,450. This is the lowest growth rate since March 10.
US Deaths: up 13.8 percent, or 1,164, to 9,616 total deaths. This is the lowest growth rate since March 29. The in terms of absolute numbers, the Global total was at the current US level 17 days ago.
Global Recoveries: up 6.37 percent, or 15,717 formerly ill patients now well, to 262,350 worldwide who have had COVID19 and recovered. That we know about.
US Recoveries: up 21.25 percent, or 3,150, to 18,000. The extended rolling average is 55.7 percent. This is cause for some guarded cheer.
One of the biggest issues of controversy in the last couple of days is the issue of the denominator. No one knows how many people have contracted the corona virus and are either currently sick, or who had no symptoms, or who had minimal symptoms, or even an ass-whipping flu, but who did not report to any hospital and are therefore unknown to the epidemiology bean counters who really need to know about them in order to count them.
Because it is possible that the number of people who have been infected with COVID-19 might not be one million, as the CDC and WHO are tallying, but might be ten million, or a hundred million, it is possible that this disease is not as massive of a threat as is feared.
If there have been one million Cases, and 70,000 have died, then the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) is 0.7 percent, which is about five times more lethal than the CFR of 0.1 to 0.15 that is associated with the annual flu. That is true. But what if there are actually 100 million Cases? And there have been only 70,000 Deaths? It is true that all of these 70,000 happened in a short period of time, thus overwhelming the hospital systems, but if the denominator is 100 times greater than the known number of Cases, then the CFR becomes relatively much, much smaller, at only 0.007.
Then a different set of questions arises: do we lock down the entire planet over a novel disease that has a CFR that is one-twentieth as lethal as the common flu? It is true we don’t have a vaccine yet. But if we shut down the economies of the world, that has its own set of implications, and those implications carry with them the likelihood of a high number of fatalities as well, albeit from different causes.
As crudely and callously as they may deliver their message, I believe that this is actually what they are trying to say at the podium.
On the one hand, it is possible that if we shut down the world economy, we lose a great number of people around the world, most of whom are already old and infirm, but a not insignificant number of younger and otherwise healthy people will also succumb.
But on the other hand, the world’s economy appears to be a machine that runs on momentum. And if we bring the machine to a halt, and remove its momentum, then it may well collapse. And economic collapse tends to lead to war, famine, mass migration, and the like.
So the dilemma is, do we lock down the world’s economy and save, say 50 million people, mostly elderly, and mostly staying alive with the aid of blood pressure medications, pacemakers, insulin, chemotherapy, and all of the other honest-to-goodness wonders of modern medicine; or do we employ heroic measures to try to save those 50 million, some of whom we will inevitably lose (and many of whom, after expending those heroic efforts, have a high likelihood of dying soon after from whatever thing is already ailing them anyway), but put at risk perhaps 500 million people through the inevitable effects of economic collapse?
Global Unresolved: up 5.75 percent, or 51,100, to 941,700 people around the world currently recorded as infected with COVID-19.
US Unresolved: up 7.3 percent, or 21,000, to 309,080 people in the United States currently recorded as infected with COVID-19.
The fact that the United States has conducted only 1.9 million tests, or fewer than 6,000 per 1 million population, placing us 41st in the world, only begs more urgently the question I posed above.
