I got the number for the UK's NHS from an article discussing how Dyson (the makers of vacuum cleaners and hand dryers) are going to produce 10,000 integrated bed/ventilators for the NHS with delivery "in weeks". (Total production run of 15,000.) The "CoVent" was designed from scratch. So a ramp in production is certainly possible. But it ain't going to be all dandy by Easter.
COVID-19 Map worldwide, with statistics
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This article gives you a sense of what's happening in London/South East England.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51714498
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51714498
Some interesting revisions in the numbers.
Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London is an epidemiologist and has dramatically revised his death estimate downward. Initially he got a lot of attention when he said that an uncontrolled spread of the virus could cause up to 510,000 deaths in Britain and up to 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. Now he is saying the number of deaths in Britain likely won't exceed 20,000 and could be much lower, and half of those people would have died this year regardless because they were so old and sick already. He also said the virus will peak in 2-3 weeks and credits the lockdown Britain implemented. He thought the lockdown would take two weeks or more to be effective, but it took two days.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archi...sh-coronavirus-deaths-revised-um-downward.php
One of the issues with the models is that the worst case scenarios assume a doubling rate that does not reflect reality. The larger the number, the harder it is to double. The worse case models also don't consider the effects of mitigation measures.
Dr. Saphier, a Fox News contributor points out that doubling rate is decreasing in the US. She credits the stay at home order. On Sunday the case doubling rate was 2 days, on Monday it was 3.4 days, and on Tuesday it was 4.7 days. I don't know where she got her data but it would be easy to verify.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/dr-saphier-breaks-down-very-encouraging-covid-19-case-numbers
Like I mentioned earlier, the media and many of our our politicians are only looking at the worst case scenario. A better approach would be to pick the most likely scenario. The cruise ship provided a very good example of the characteristics of the disease.
Going forward, we need to be better prepared for pandemics, we needs better reporting (don't hold your breath), and we need a logical plan targeted to where it needed. We can't continue to kill the economy every time a new virus comes along.
Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London is an epidemiologist and has dramatically revised his death estimate downward. Initially he got a lot of attention when he said that an uncontrolled spread of the virus could cause up to 510,000 deaths in Britain and up to 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. Now he is saying the number of deaths in Britain likely won't exceed 20,000 and could be much lower, and half of those people would have died this year regardless because they were so old and sick already. He also said the virus will peak in 2-3 weeks and credits the lockdown Britain implemented. He thought the lockdown would take two weeks or more to be effective, but it took two days.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archi...sh-coronavirus-deaths-revised-um-downward.php
One of the issues with the models is that the worst case scenarios assume a doubling rate that does not reflect reality. The larger the number, the harder it is to double. The worse case models also don't consider the effects of mitigation measures.
Dr. Saphier, a Fox News contributor points out that doubling rate is decreasing in the US. She credits the stay at home order. On Sunday the case doubling rate was 2 days, on Monday it was 3.4 days, and on Tuesday it was 4.7 days. I don't know where she got her data but it would be easy to verify.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/dr-saphier-breaks-down-very-encouraging-covid-19-case-numbers
Like I mentioned earlier, the media and many of our our politicians are only looking at the worst case scenario. A better approach would be to pick the most likely scenario. The cruise ship provided a very good example of the characteristics of the disease.
Going forward, we need to be better prepared for pandemics, we needs better reporting (don't hold your breath), and we need a logical plan targeted to where it needed. We can't continue to kill the economy every time a new virus comes along.
Summary of your post: NPI are helping. Neil Ferguson's team (he has contracted the virus) is able to update their estimates because many of their recommendations were implemented. We will likely owe him and his team an enormous debt of gratitude.
People began to treat the threat seriously. Good. I'm glad the NPI were implemented. In the US, state governors took leadership. Let's see how long the situation lasts. I can tell you that Miami isn't even close to the sort of lockdown that there is in New York, London or elsewhere in Europe. Not even remotely close. And if the stay at home orders are lifted prematurely?
So far today there have already been a further 11,544 confirmed cases in the US and a further 123 deaths. (The numbers kept going higher in the short time it took to type this.) It ain't going to be over by Easter. The fat lady hasn't started singing yet. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Asia was better prepared, principally as a result of SARS 30 years ago. I won't be holding my breath expecting the current administration will better prepare the US for the next one.
Neither of us will get to come back and say "I told you so" regarding the "unchecked virus" scenario because - thankfully - attempts have been made, and some initial success earned, to check it.
(So far 1.4% of the 712 people who contracted the virus on the Diamond Princess have died. That's not far off early expectations for mortality of COVID-19. Ferguson's report had an "overall IFR of 0.9% (95% credible interval 0.4%-1.4%)." 105 people are still receiving care. Luckily they were some of the first to receive it.)
People began to treat the threat seriously. Good. I'm glad the NPI were implemented. In the US, state governors took leadership. Let's see how long the situation lasts. I can tell you that Miami isn't even close to the sort of lockdown that there is in New York, London or elsewhere in Europe. Not even remotely close. And if the stay at home orders are lifted prematurely?
So far today there have already been a further 11,544 confirmed cases in the US and a further 123 deaths. (The numbers kept going higher in the short time it took to type this.) It ain't going to be over by Easter. The fat lady hasn't started singing yet. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
Asia was better prepared, principally as a result of SARS 30 years ago. I won't be holding my breath expecting the current administration will better prepare the US for the next one.
Neither of us will get to come back and say "I told you so" regarding the "unchecked virus" scenario because - thankfully - attempts have been made, and some initial success earned, to check it.
(So far 1.4% of the 712 people who contracted the virus on the Diamond Princess have died. That's not far off early expectations for mortality of COVID-19. Ferguson's report had an "overall IFR of 0.9% (95% credible interval 0.4%-1.4%)." 105 people are still receiving care. Luckily they were some of the first to receive it.)
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Let's check her math. I will use this site for number of confirmed cases. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
We can't use today's figure because they day isn't over and the number of new confirmed cases today keeps growing.
Yesterday the site records 68,211 cases. The day before, 54,856. So that's a 24.3% daily increase. A 24.3% daily increase doubles the number of confirmed cases in fractionally over 3 days. (3 days gets you to a multiple of 1.92x; 4 days gets you to 2.39x.) As a reference point, a daily increase of 26% leads to a doubling every 3 days.
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I don't know where she got her numbers either, but they are wrong. Here are the doubling times* for U.S. confirmed cases of COVID-19 since crossing the 100-case threshold on 2 March. No trend here yet.
Date/cumulative cases/doubling rate (days)
2-Mar-20 100
3-Mar-20 124 3.2
4-Mar-20 158 2.9
5-Mar-20 221 2.1
6-Mar-20 319 1.9
7-Mar-20 435 2.2
8-Mar-20 541 3.2
9-Mar-20 704 2.6
10-Mar-20 994 2.0
11-Mar-20 1301 2.6
12-Mar-20 1630 3.1
13-Mar-20 2183 2.4
14-Mar-20 2770 2.9
15-Mar-20 3613 2.6
16-Mar-20 4596 2.9
17-Mar-20 6344 2.2
18-Mar-20 9197 1.9
19-Mar-20 13779 1.7
20-Mar-20 19367 2.0
21-Mar-20 24192 3.1
22-Mar-20 33592 2.1
23-Mar-20 43781 2.6
24-Mar-20 54856 3.1
25-Mar-20 68211 3.2
*I calculated doubling time (in days) by:
1. Calculating the proportional daily increase (call it "x") in case number as reported by Johns Hopkins.
x=(case number on day d+1/case number on day d)/case number on day d
2. doubling time = log(2)/log(x)
https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
3rd chart for an easy to see visual representation of trends across countries
3rd chart for an easy to see visual representation of trends across countries
Very informative!! Thx for posting!
Sorry to follow my own post, but the U.S. is now #1, having passed both China and Italy with 81,943 total confirmed cases of COVID-19.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
EDIT: And while it took China more than 2 months to go from 100 to 81,285 cases, we showed them how it's done by passing that mark in just 24 days.
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ronsatspokane
Gold $$ Contributor
That's the most linear logarithmic curve I've ever seen.
J F Johannes
AKA "RatRifle"
You seem to be frothing at the mouth a little. You scare me! Not the numbers you post, YOU.
ronsatspokane
Gold $$ Contributor
ronsatspokane
Gold $$ Contributor
Government death panels now. World of the workers unite. Where have I heard these before?
On the figures issue, I read an interesting comment by a UK Daily Telegraph financial journalist whom I rate very highly. (He warned early on that western countries especially the US weren't taking CV-19 nearly seriously enough and his predictions of that time are unfortunately proving all too accurate now.)
Anyway his point is that financial sector analysts who are all now working flat out on the effects of the pandemic on both national economies and the likely futures of individual sectors and companies, now totally ignore the 'confirmed case' figures being published as they're hopelessly understated. They use deaths as the one to watch to see what the real trend is. Case numbers maybe work in the very early stages before deaths really kick in, but not when the disease becomes widespread.
Even death figures can be dubious in the short term. Apart from those countries who either don't know because of weak regional/local health infrastructures / don't give a monkey's about how many of their citizens are dying, and/or are congenital liars to the rest of the world about such issues, there can be simple accounting errors by heavily stressed officials. There was great relief, almost jubilation, when Italy's day on day additional death count apparently fell a couple of days back, but it turned out a day later that the return from a region had been missed and the overall total understated by 40. Add them in and at best there is a maybe-start-of-a-plateau, but not a fall. It was also reported today by the same journo' that the Mayor of the Italian town of Bergamo (pop: 122K, part of the Milan metro area) claims that four times as many people are dying of the virus in his town than the official Italian Health Ministry figures show. This guy seems to have a habit of making wild claims of various sorts over the virus, so it may all be smoke and mirrors, but it makes you wonder (not to say worry!).
Anyway his point is that financial sector analysts who are all now working flat out on the effects of the pandemic on both national economies and the likely futures of individual sectors and companies, now totally ignore the 'confirmed case' figures being published as they're hopelessly understated. They use deaths as the one to watch to see what the real trend is. Case numbers maybe work in the very early stages before deaths really kick in, but not when the disease becomes widespread.
Even death figures can be dubious in the short term. Apart from those countries who either don't know because of weak regional/local health infrastructures / don't give a monkey's about how many of their citizens are dying, and/or are congenital liars to the rest of the world about such issues, there can be simple accounting errors by heavily stressed officials. There was great relief, almost jubilation, when Italy's day on day additional death count apparently fell a couple of days back, but it turned out a day later that the return from a region had been missed and the overall total understated by 40. Add them in and at best there is a maybe-start-of-a-plateau, but not a fall. It was also reported today by the same journo' that the Mayor of the Italian town of Bergamo (pop: 122K, part of the Milan metro area) claims that four times as many people are dying of the virus in his town than the official Italian Health Ministry figures show. This guy seems to have a habit of making wild claims of various sorts over the virus, so it may all be smoke and mirrors, but it makes you wonder (not to say worry!).
ronsatspokane
Gold $$ Contributor
1.4% of 712 OLD PEOPLE. The virus was released in the most vulnerable population. Perhaps by a member of the crew, who knows. Project those results to the broader population and this starts looking more like the flu which is estimated to claim 20-40 thousand lives in the US this year.
ronsatspokane
Gold $$ Contributor
Johns Hopkins live cronovirus map disagrees. Not far off but not yet. New York seems to be the problem.
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