From February 27, 2020
I needed to find something to latch on for some hope, because frankly, looking at all this data and research is very depressing.
Since China is the furthest along in this, I decided to look at the epidemic curve for the mainland. There is a little hope here. Clearly the number of new cases have dropped recently.
While this is positive, I also temper it with how different society is there than in the West, and I’ve alluded to that before. China as also taken very aggressive measures to control the spread, which might not be as accepted in other countries. Part of the reason for the spread in Italy was the failure to take the proper precautions at a hospital. I’m not surprised though. In my years of experience in hospital infection control, I’ve seen many shortcuts that would likely have produced the same result and have had to investigate the resulting outbreaks.
Coronavirus: inquiry opens into hospitals at centre of Italy outbreak
Disclaimer: This commentary is my own interpretation and does not represent the analysis by the government or my employer. The data is from the Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
