CV19 Pandemic Update for 2020-04-02

I did not make screenshots of my favorite graphs, but their URLs are at the bottom of this post. Deaths and confirmations log chart is very visibly bending in the right direction. We still have a ways to go.

Executive Summary:

• Worldwide, 930,725 confirmed cases and 49,661 deaths, which is within 1% of the 1-day estimate.
• US is 243k infected, and 5926 dead, which is also within 1% of 1-day estimates.
• China probably has ~400k unconfirmed cases, and ~16,500 unconfirmed deaths.
• We need our confirmed and death exponents to fall to as close to 100% as possible.
• US confirmed exponent is stalled in the 114% range. The death date exponent has not yet fallen. I think NY and CA hot zones are affecting it.
• TX confirmed exponent is averaging in the 115% range. The death rate exponent just fell into the 1-teens for the first time.
• US deaths per confirmed case continues to increase, and will do so until as far as 47 days after the last new infection.
• Many places in the US extended their stay-at-home plans to May 4.

1-day Estimate for April 2
non-China 932,543/48,756; Italy 115,572/13,925; USA 241,947/5,843; Texas 4,979/81; Maine 303/5
SD Adjusted USA 256,985/5,982; Texas 5,331/83

Actual April 2
Non-China 930,725/49,661; Italy 115,242;13,915; USA 243,453/5,926; TX 5,069/77; ME 376/7

1-Day Estimate for April 3
Non-China 1,018,824/56,704; Italy 120,107;14,719; USA 277,775/7,382; TX 5,900/90; ME 411/8
SD Adjusted USA 287,625/7,557; Texas 6,139/100

7-day Estimate for April 8
non-China 1,917,505/109,549; Italy 169,991/23,851; USA 745,176/25,239; Texas 15,874/306; Maine 656/26
SD Adjusted USA 707,819/21,874; Texas 14,357/317

Commentary:

Day to Day deaths are still climbing nationally. Some states have begun slowing, but CA and NY have a lot going on. It may take some time for them to dig out of this.

After lockdown, confirmed cases take 9-12 days to be affected, and deaths another 8-11 days after that. Anywhere that is overloaded will have a higher death rate, which may offset this prediction

As expected with the slow-down in spread, our mortality rate keeps climbing. 1.44%, 1.55%, 1.67%, 1.75%, 1.84%, 2.06%, 2.23%, 243%

Inflection point for outbreaks with an R0 of 2.2 is 60% of the population becoming immune. Divide that by whatever you think our detection rate is. I think we get about 38%, so maybe 75m people in the US showing as confirmed. In other words, we are clamping down on the spread. It is not slowing due to going through the bulk of the population. If we all started mingling again tomorrow, we would see a big surge in cases 2 weeks later.

Average is 6 days to onset and 14 days from onset to death for those who do not survive. Social distancing data lags by 3-5 days. Statistics lag by 1 day. Detection lags by 9-12 days. Impact delay of social distancing on confirmations MAY BE 9 days. The correlation is a little fuzzy, but using 9 days got the estimates within 10% over 7 days.

Some good research is going on that promises to improve mortality rates, but that will probably be more for the next batch of people. Even if it is solved now, logistics of getting it deployed are not instantaneous.

Spreadsheet is updated, and downloadable here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vocCN445AZyVBBLsv0kJR8ZDP9DM0UST/view

My favorite charts:
http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/
https://www.unacast.com/covid19/social-distancing-scoreboard

Additional Data Sources:
https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data
https://github.com/COVID19Tracking/covid-tracking-data/tree/master/data
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-testing

China Underreporting Claims:
I do not think this is willful deception, so much as, they are only reporting what they can confirm. It just happens that they can confirm only a small subset of the infections prior to March.

China cremation rates, I lost the URL for the older data, but current data is here:
http://mzj.wuhan.gov.cn/tjxx/387166.jhtml
2019    Number of cremated remains    JZH014221000    56,007
It varies by about 2500 per quarter, so roughly 5k per month in Wuhan province.

The number of urns and cremations are very high, and “the funeral homes are unable to keep up.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/stacks-of-urns-in-wuhan-prompt-new-questions-of-virus-s-toll
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/features/2020/03/31/Delivery-of-5-000-urns-undermines-China-s-coronavirus-official-death-toll-Report
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Wuhan,-endless-queues-for-ashes-of-coronavirus-dead-cast-doubts-on-numbers-49673.html

There are multiple sources indicating people who were not checked into a hospital were not counted.
Journalistic sources include
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/cremate-02142020105822.html
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3050311/its-pneumonia-everybody-china-knows-about-many-deaths-will-never
https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/84/3/news30306/en/

I did not save teh ones from February where the WHO felt they were underestimating because they had no way to count those otuside of the hospitals. They said 4-8 times higher rates were likely.

This exclusion has been common in other countries, including Italy, Iran, etc:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/italys-coronavirus-death-toll-is-far-higher-than-reported-11585767179
https://www.space.com/iran-coronavirus-graves-satellite-images.html