Tracking the Corona Virus Data
I’ve been tracking the corona virus data for my own use,
with my own spread sheets, since March 12th, when we had 1282 cases
and 37 deaths in the country. As of May
4th, we have 1,191,014 cases, and 68,679 deaths.
The data sources that I’ve been using are the New York Times
“World-o-meter” daily updates of cases and deaths down to a granularity of
counties in the U.S. I’ve found that this
NYT daily compendium includes data from several other sources such as CDC,
Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg, NPR and others.
For modelling data references, I’ve used the Bill Gates funded
Washington University, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)
models that Drs. Brix and Fauci use in the White House briefings. I have also used published historical data
for both “normal” flu seasons, and other pandemics/epidemics in the twentieth
century.
At first, I did not observe any of the “flattening” of the
world, country, state or county curves that I was tracking. Cases and deaths just kept increasing. They were not tapering off at all. Then, I got some ideas from watching NY
Governor Cuomo talk about required hospital beds for the New York City
Metropolitan area. Cuomo’s statisticians
were using three day rolling averages to identify this trend.
In early April, I started looking at changes each day of the
last three day’s average cases and deaths, and the “flattening” was becoming
apparent. Not a nice, continuous,
flattening of the plot. There were peaks
and valleys, but a decreasing trend could be observed, for the world, for the
country, and for more granular entities.
This trend continues.
It is really apparent for New York State, the epicenter of the pandemic
in the U.S., with the largest concentration of cases and deaths in the New York
City Metropolitan area. The flattening
of the three-day rolling average is also apparent for Massachusetts, Texas, and
other states and individual counties, but still with substantial “spikes” at
times.
Along with many others, I have questioned whether we should
have shut down the whole country, (and in fact most of the world) for this
corona virus. I have read and heard the
contrarian opinions of eminent doctors from Alabama and Bakersfield,
California, make very compelling points about the shut downs. (It does not
assuage the abounding conspiracy theories when the big technology companies
like Youtube, remove the Bakersfield doctors’ presentation because it does not
fit current government thinking).
But try as I may to debunk shutting down the world for a
virus, I have to conclude that indeed this virus is extremely contagious,
extremely deadly, and that literally, many millions would have died world-wide
if we had not listened to the epidemiological experts and curtailed human
activity. It may not have been done as
quickly, or as efficiently as it should have been, but I believe that world
leaders acted in the best interests of their people, as best they could, with
the knowledge they had at the time.
A comparison of Sweden, who did not shut down their economy,
with Norway, Denmark and Finland, who shut down, along with most of the rest of
the world, clearly shows how taking mitigating steps decreases the spread of
the virus. Data is as of the end of
April.
There will always be recriminations and “Monday morning
quarterbacking”, to second guess shutdown and startup decisions. In the U.S., with rampant “Trump-phobia”, no
matter what the president did or does is acceptable to the rabid leftist
mob. (And yes, those epithets are well
deserved, in light of the leftists’ continuing deceit and hypocrisy).
In looking at these numbers daily, it becomes apparent that
this virus is still claiming a lot of lives, both is the U.S., and
world-wide. It flares up suddenly in
spots where there is any human activity, pointing up how contagious and deadly
it really is, particularly for us older folks.
There may have been some over-reaction to the virus at first, and now, the
issue of reopening the country and economy seems to have become politicized,
rather than approached with some degree of national cohesion, rationality and
dignity.
On a positive note, some therapeutics like Gilead’s Remdesivir
have shown promise in mitigating the disease, and there are upwards of seven
clinical trials of vaccines against Covid-19, with some experts saying that we
might have a working vaccine by the end of the year.
In the meantime, more people will die, no matter what we
do. Obviously, we cannot keep the whole
country, and the whole world, shut down long term. People will also die with this option. Again, a phased and cautious and mitigated reopening
of life in general, seems to be what most states and countries are doing. There will always be outliers, and we can
only hope that these will not prove to be too disruptive.
Ray Gruszecki
May 4, 2020
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