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BBfanboy -> RE: OT: Corona virus (3/20/2020 8:54:18 PM)
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ORIGINAL: obvert
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ORIGINAL: Kull
Spain is the next train wreck. Today they moved into 3rd place in the world in terms of known cases (see attachment), but they've only tested 30,000 (they finally appeared in the wiki testing table today), substantially less than Italy's 182K.
This article talks about the state of testing in Spain. The tests they use take a long time to process, and while Spain has the ability to manufacture their own kits, they are dependent on parts from outside, and those sources are drying up. As a result, the testing guidelines specifically exclude using tests for contact tracing, so you can imagine what's coming.
Really too bad about Spain. I thought they had enough warning to get testing going, and prepare a bit. Crazy how fast this goes once it takes hold in a place. They're testing per million is where the UK was yesterday, but the UK has jumped a lot, yet positives/1000 are way lower than Spain.
I've been wondering if mortality numbers multiplied by 0.5% (low mortality estimate) might be a closer indicator of actual cases in the respective countries. For the UK today that would be 177. The resulting number would be 35,400 cases. Judging by the information that a fifteen fold increase in critical Covid cases are now coming into hospitals here, I'd say at least this and probably higher. This may get bad here soon too.
The testing chart data is interesting about the positives/1000 tests. Italy and the US are practically on par for that stat, France is not far behind and Spain has double the number of positives while Canada has only 14.8 or so per thousand tests. I figure this means that Italy, the US, France and Spain did not start testing early enough and now are mostly testing people who have already shown strong indications they have the virus. This in turn indicates the lack of test kits or personnel/venues/geographic coverage to test broadly where there is any suspicion at all that the virus could be there. The latter is what is needed to get a handle on this.
Canada has been lucky with most of the travel-related initial cases coming in to Toronto and Vancouver. But we let it get out to other cities around the country before starting closures and travel restrictions so we will likely see a sharp rise for a few weeks before it tapers off. Still, I think we are luckier than most and will have a modest curve to suffer. We might even end our quarantine earlier than most countries.
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