It is gratifying to see such an intelligent discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic on S4ME. If the people who are actually managing this pandemic displayed as much knowledge of the subject as the people here, I think we would be in much better shape than we are.
Meanwhile, as the data accumulates, it's possible to gradually get a better idea of where we're heading. Yesterday was another bad day in the US, with COVID-19 deaths jumping by 1321 for a total of 7392. Here are the latest historical charts from
Worldometer:
Note that I have selected the logarithmic scale for the first chart. To the extent that that data falls along a straight line, it means that growth is proceeding at a steady exponential rate. If you put a straightedge connecting March 2nd to April 2nd, you'll see that it fits the data very well. On average, since March 2nd, the total deaths have been increasing by a factor of 10 every 10 1/3 days. This means that after three cycles - 31 days - the total number of deaths has increased by a factor of 1000. Sure enough, March 2nd had 6 deaths, while April 2nd had 6071.
For those who wonder if 6071 is really a big deal, if the line continues at its present slope, the total deaths for April 12th will be about 60,000, and the total deaths for April 23rd would be about 600,000 - far above official projections. Hopefully, the mitigation procedures will be having much more of an effect by then, and we won't get anywhere near 600,000. On the other hand, if what we do isn't working, and we do see around 600,000 or so deaths by April 23rd, the next 10-day period ending on May 3 could see total deaths rise into the millions. A factor of 10 growth resulting in total deaths of 6 million would be unlikely in the extreme, as by this time there would be many forces working to level the curve.
The numbers for the UK are even worse. In the 30-day period ending today, total deaths rose from one to 3605 - almost exactly half the total deaths as in the US. And in the latest period that I described for the US data - March 22nd to April 2nd - the rise in deaths was also tenfold, just as in the US. In the case of the UK, it was from 281 on March 22nd to 2921 on April 2nd. (Although this is 11 days instead of 10 1/3 days, the rise is actually slightly more than tenfold.) Considering that the UK has only a fifth of the population of the US, this bodes poorly for total mortality as a percentage of population in the UK. Here are the
most recent charts for the UK:
If these numbers look outrageous to anyone, please review the video in
this post. It is in the nature of exponential growth to appear to be going nowhere for a long time, and then suddenly become totally overwhelming.
Seems like the curves are flattening in multiple countries at the same time despite different starting points. Interesting. Could it have something to do with the weather?
I don't think so, especially since cases are currently exploding in the tropical southern part of Florida (which is generally considered to be south of a west-east line drawn from Bradenton along the south shore of Lake Okeechobee to Vero Beach). This area includes all the high population centers of southeast Florida. California has a subtropical climate from the southern border up past the San Francisco area, and the cities along the coast (including Los Angeles and San Diego) are alos experiencing a major increase in the infection rate - not a decrease.
