obvert
Posts: 14050
Joined: 1/17/2011 From: PDX (and now) London, UK Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Kull quote:
ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins This is worth reading: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/simple-math-alarming-answers-covid-19/ Since all the really scary stuff in that article starts with the premise that "infection counts double every 6 days", lets take a close look at that. First off, we have the South Korea numbers (posted earlier and updated through today). However, I've added a third column so you can see the % increase compared with the total 6 days earlier. A few things to keep in mind: - The early counts are ludicrous in size (the totals were too small to be meaningful), so we'll start by comparing the total on 2/28 with the one on 2/20, and will maintain the 6-day comparison up through 3/10 (today) - When looking at the percentages in the 3rd column, 100% means the numbers doubled, and anything higher means an even greater rate of increase. OK, here we go: 2/18 - 31 2/19 - 58 2/20 - 111 2/21 - 209 2/22 - 436 2/23 - 602 2/24 - 833 2/25 - 893 2/26 - 1261 2/27 - 1766 2/28 - 2022 - 364% 2/29 - 3150 - 423% 3/1 - 3526 - 323% 3/2 - 4212 - 372% 3/3 - 4812 - 282% 3/4 - 5328 - 202% 3/5 - 6088 - 201% 3/6 - 6593 - 109% 3/7 - 7041 - 100% 3/8 - 7134 - 69% 3/9 - 7382 - 53% 3/10 - 7513 - 41% Roughly 2 weeks into the epidemic, the 6-day comparisons are extremely high, 300%+. But starting with Day 15 (3/3), it's in the 200's and falling rapidly. To the extent that by today, it's down to 40%. Which means, barring something crazy, the "nightmare scenario" is not happening in South Korea. OK then, do we have any other examples of relatively reliable data that's "mature" in numbers? (i.e. enough data so it's not just statistical noise) Well let's take a look at Italy. That would appear to be the textbook case (so far) in how NOT to handle this thing. The epidemic took off in Italy around 2/21, so we'll look at the same three columns of data, and will commence the 6-day percent tracking on 3/2 (looking back at 2/25), since it's 10 days in and roughly the same total case count we started with when examining South Korea: 2/21 - 20 2/22 - 79 2/23 - 150 2/24 - 227 2/25 - 320 2/26 - 445 2/27 - 650 2/28 - 888 2/29 - 1128 3/1 - 1694 3/2 - 2036 - 536% 3/3 - 2502 - 462% 3/4 - 3089 - 375% 3/5 - 3858 - 334% 3/6 - 4636 - 311% 3/7 - 5883 - 247% 3/8 - 7375 - 262% 3/9 - 9172 - 267% 3/10 - 10149 - 229% The only good news is that the rate has dropped noticeably, but nothing like South Korea. In fact it's been stuck in the 200%+ range for 4 days now (which is a 4x increase, not 2x), so you can kind of see why they went uber-draconian today and shut down the whole country (the "China solution"). Anyway, for those interested in seeing how their country is handling this (at least in terms of rate of increase), that's how to analyze your national numbers. Thanks. That is really helpful to understand the trending. This is the issue with that in some places though. We just don't have numbers due to low testing. Even here in the UK it could be a lot more thorough, and some think the govt is stalling on the testing and numbers to make sure there is less panic and less of a financial shutdown. I doubt that, and I sincerely hope the numbers tested pick up everywhere since it's working in the countries doing the most, South Korea and China.
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< Message edited by obvert -- 3/10/2020 9:44:47 PM >
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